Lord Ashcroft KCMG PC is an international businessman, philanthropist, author, and pollster. For more information on his work, visit lordashcroft.com.
Unite the right
A regular feature of the convention is for the vanquished candidate to pay public homage to the victor. This time it was the turn of Nikki Haley, who put up a fierce fight for the nomination, and was telling primary voters only months ago that Trump was “unhinged” and incapable of winning a general election. Wandering into the Kentucky delegation’s hospitality box to watch the action with Mitch McConnell, my welcome was considerably warmer than Haley’s distinctly mixed initial reception from the floor.
“President Trump asked me to speak to this convention in the name of unity,” she began amid occasional hooting. “I’ll start by making one thing perfectly clear. Donald Trump has my strong endorsement.” That improved things considerably.
Haley was perhaps the ideal messenger for the many voters who see this election as a choice between the lesser of two evils. She said she wanted to speak to Americans “who don’t agree with Donald Trump a hundred per cent of the time,” adding “I happen to know some of them.” A vote for Biden effectively meant a vote for a President Harris, she said. “If we have four more years of Biden – or a single day of Kamala Harris – our country will be badly worse off. For the sake of our nation, we have to go with Donald Trump.”
She emphasised a theme we often hear in focus groups – that unlike Biden, Trump kept the bad guys at bay and America out of trouble: “When Obama was president, Putin invaded Crimea. With Biden as president, Putin invaded all of Ukraine. But when Donald Trump was president, Putin did nothing… A strong president doesn’t start wars, a strong president prevents wars”.
Unity on whose terms?
If uniting the GOP is part of winning the election, calls from President Biden to unite the country sound rather different to Republicans here in Milwaukee. “This is one of my pet peeves in politics,” declared Senator Mike Lee of Utah at an event earlier in the week. “As a rule of thumb, if someone in a position of immense power calls for unity without an explanation of how to do it, it’s manipulation – it’s a passive-aggressive way of saying ‘everyone should unite behind me’.” And as 2024 primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy put it, “We’re not going to unite the country by each walking up to the 50-yard line and holding hands and singing kumbaya.”
The Democrats have a difficult needle thread in framing their critique of Trump during the campaign. Biden achieved the right tone in his doubtless heartfelt response to the assassination attempt. It was striking to hear him talk about “Donald”, and his Oval Office remarks – “while we may disagree, we’re not enemies. We’re neighbours” – were on the money, if sometimes falteringly delivered.
In his interview with NBC’s Lester Holt on Monday, he talked again about the need to lower the temperature of politics. But apart from admitting it had been a “mistake” for him to say it was “time to put Trump in the bullseye” during a recent call with donors, all the examples he gave of inflammatory rhetoric were from Republicans. Notably, the President’s campaign website still declares “Joe Biden is protecting American democracy. Donald Trump would destroy it… He is running to regain power, punish his enemies, and silence his opponents… Trump is running for President as a convicted felon who will do anything to help himself—no matter who he hurts in the process… he is promising to rule as a dictator on ‘day one’… he will use the presidency to prosecute those who oppose him.”
I guess that within a few weeks – if that – things will be at least as heated as before. After the shooting, some Republicans claimed that Democrat rhetoric led directly to the attempt on Trump’s life. If that seems overblown, how long before we hear a prominent Democrat imply – or assert – that Trump had only himself to blame?
A nation waits
It’s easy to over-hype a political set-piece, but Trump’s acceptance address to close the convention tomorrow night will be the most consequential in living memory. As we’ve heard, the former president abandoned his prepared text (“a humdinger”) and will attempt to bring people together rather than launching an extended attack on Biden and his record.
This is surely the right approach. A speech laying out his plans for the country and a sincere pledge to govern for all Americans could prove to be one of the most powerful – if unlikely – events of its kind. Maybe not many Americans are open to revising their opinion of Trump, but not many need to – in 2020, fewer than 50,000 votes separated the two candidates in the states that mattered. We know many are weighing the effectiveness of his policies against the downsides of his character. Anything that can move that dial will help. With politics already having become scratchier since the weekend – hostilities have already resumed in the TV ad wars – some in Trumpworld may be tempted to revert to type. Let’s see.
Trump has often exasperated his supporters with his indiscipline, sometimes seeming to open his mouth only to change feet. After bitter experience, not everyone is convinced the promised shift in tone will happen, or at least that it will last. “As a divorced woman, let me tell you that one thing I’ve learned is that people don’t change,” one senior party figure told me yesterday. Maybe having someone try to shoot you dead is one thing that could do it.
Grass is greener
Taking refuge in Starbucks in search of air-conditioned respite between receptions I run into Congressman Michael Rulli of the 6th district of Ohio. He tells me he is a devotee of PMQs and asks for career guidance: could he stand for parliament when he retires from Washington? He’ll need to take citizenship in the UK, I advise, or if he prefers, a Commonwealth country like Belize. For a moment he looks as though he’s considering it. “Being a backbench MP looks like such fun,” he enthuses. Crikey. What must it be like in the House of Representatives?
