MILWAUKEE — Any time your candidate survives an assassination attempt in near-miraculous fashion two days before your convention starts, you’ve already had a good one.

The GOP did what it wanted to do in Milwaukee. Republicans got Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) out of the way as quickly as possible. Vice-presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance (Ohio) sold himself as an American success story and a sitcom dad with funny stories of his gun-toting, God-loving, f-word-dropping Mamaw. The protests outside the convention were relatively subdued, and shirt-ripping Hulk Hogan was the opposite of subdued. The tribute to the 13 U.S. service members killed at the Abbey Gate in Kabul was a genuinely moving moment, and a sharp reminder that President Biden had erroneously claimed in the June 27 debate with Donald Trump, “Truth is, I’m the only president this century that doesn’t have — this decade — any troops dying anywhere in the world like he did.”

And if Trump started his speech much later than the East Coast would prefer, he offered something we almost never get to see from him: vulnerability. “The assassin’s bullet came within a quarter of an inch of taking my life. So many people have asked me what happened, ‘tell us what happened, please,’ and therefore, I’ll tell you what happened, and you’ll never hear it from me a second time, because actually it’s too painful to tell. … I felt something hit me really, really hard on my right ear. I said to myself, what was that? It can only be a bullet. My hand was covered with blood — just absolutely blood all over the place. … There was blood pouring everywhere, but for some reason, I felt very safe, because I had God on my side.”

Advertisement

(As the speech went on, Trump lost focus and started winging it, at one point talking about the good chances of the Green Bay Packers this coming season.)

This is a unified party, in large part because almost all of Trump’s most ardent past GOP critics either converted to Trumpism or aren’t Republicans anymore. (One of the people who denounced Trump the loudest back in 2016 just signed on to be his running mate.) Mitt Romney is retiring from the Senate. Liz Cheney lost her primary. Jeff Flake is wrapping up a stint as Biden’s ambassador to Turkey. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s foes from the GOP primaries, this week endorsed him and poured on the praise.

If you wanted anything resembling traditional free-market economics, you can be forgiven for thinking you’ve stumbled into the Democrats’ gathering in San Francisco to nominate Walter Mondale in 1984. But if Americans as a whole — or Republicans — still hungered for traditional free-market economics, Trump wouldn’t be the nominee.

Advertisement

On Monday, in a state where Scott Walker won two terms as a union-battling governor, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien cheered how Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) “changed his position on ‘national right to work.’” (Yes, Hawley quit supporting right to work, and that’s terrible!) But the line everyone will remember from O’Brien’s address will be, regarding Trump, “In light of what happened to him on Saturday, he has proven to be one tough S.O.B.!” The Biden team is spitting mad about O’Brien’s speech, and they ought to be.

Trump’s plan for a 10 percent tariff on all imported goods — which would instantly make prices jump on much of what Americans buy — was alchemically transformed by Vance into the anodyne “We’re done sacrificing supply chains to unlimited global trade, and we’re going to stamp more and more products with that beautiful label ‘Made in the U.S.A.’”

As economic policy, this is hot garbage. As a plan to win Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and maybe even Minnesota, this is swinging for the fences.

Advertisement

But the MAGA crowd can grumble a bit, too. The night of Vance’s speech, delegates were provided placards declaring, “Trump will end the Ukraine war.” But Vance didn’t mention Russia or Ukraine, just a fleeting, vague reference to “Together, we will make sure our allies share in the burden of securing world peace. No more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer.”

You might have expected more jokes about Biden’s age, and DeSantis did jab, “Our enemies do not confine their designs to between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. We need a commander in chief who can lead 24 hours a day, seven days a week. America cannot afford four more years of a ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ presidency.”

But Republicans face a bewildering challenge, making a case against an incumbent president who may not be the Democratic nominee for much longer. All those convention references to “the Biden-Harris administration” were not accidental.

When the story of the 2024 presidential race is told, the conventions may just be minor footnotes; they rarely turn out all that memorable. But Republicans avoided mistakes and made the best sales pitch they could.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLyxtc2ipqerX2d9c4COaW5oaWhkwbPBzKlkr5memLJuvsSprJukmZiur3nCqKWvnZ6ptrC6jKysnJuVqMBw