This summer’s Republican and Democratic nominating conventions were anything but conventional. Absent from both were the personal rivalries and factional infighting that usually flare up when these coalition parties gather to anoint their standard bearer.
What explains these rare displays of party cohesion? That would be Donald Trump’s genius for polarizing Americans.
July’s Republican convention in Milwaukee looked like a gaudier and more raucous version of a Chinese Communist Party plenum. Speaker after speaker acclaimed Trump as their party’s great helmsman as he looked on approvingly from his imperial box.
Trump’s third nomination essentially was a mass conversion ceremony in which Republicans swore fealty to his brand of apocalyptic populism. Peruse their platform, and you’ll see that Republicans no longer stand for free markets, small government, individual autonomy, fiscal rectitude, judicial restraint and muscular U.S. leadership for a freer world.
