Buss: Assassination attempt will further unite Republicans under Trump at convention
Kaitlyn BussThis week's Republican National Convention, which begins Monday in Milwaukee, was always going to be all Trump, all the way. The former president and his team have spent months choreographing a highly disciplined acceptance, with nothing to distract from his "common sense agenda."
Now it is also a moment that demands sobriety — and strength, which former President Donald Trump has already shown since Saturday's assassination attempt.
The developments assure the convention will meet its primary goal of unity and locking the entire GOP base into a focused message. Trump will arrive in Milwaukee to a hero's welcome, having not just survived the assassin's bullet, but standing and walking defiantly from the stage, blood on his face, and imploring his loyalists to "Fight!"
"He will have a win like nobody has ever had before when he accepts the nomination Thursday," predicts former Republican Congressman Mike Bishop of Rochester. "The base is already fired up. They will go crazy for him when he takes the stage."
Even before Saturday, Trump’s brand had become ubiquitous with the GOP, while past divisions within the party appear to have melted away.
Now, former rival and Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley has been added to the speaker list.
Before the shooting, which killed one rally attendee and left two others wounded, Trump had been able to accomplish what the far more experienced candidates who preceded him couldn’t in presenting a strategy that builds on the evolving cross-section of voters identifying as Republican.
That includes a majority of Republicans who can agree with the mainstays of Trump's agenda, which now include sealing the southern border, ending inflation, implementing “large tax cuts for workers and no tax on tips,” defending the constitution, preventing “World War III” and keeping men out of women’s sports, as well as letting abortion be decided by states.
Chaotic in its inception, this new Republican coalition is more disciplined than in 2016 and 2020.
The Trump campaign is targeting high propensity voters to encourage other get-out-the-vote efforts down the ballot. And Trump’s endorsements in key Congressional seats have been more politically astute than 2020 and 2022, including in Michigan.
Trump's platform also will underscore how crucial Michigan is to his election calculus, calling for an end to the electric vehicle mandates. Polls show his lead in Michigan narrowest among the half-dozen battleground states.
“This is the first opportunity that the Trump campaign has to put a lasting imprint on the Republican Party of Donald Trump,” Chris LaCivita, Trump's co-campaign manager and chief operating officer of the RNC, told me in an interview. “It’s clearly his party — and that was the goal of the platform.”
That reality carries risk given Trump's high negatives, even among some Republicans. But it is also an opportunity for a Republican Party that has struggled to unify and win elections to retake the White House and Congress.
Now, that effort has been energized by the attempt on Trump's life.
Trump was heavily involved with the party platform and led its quick adoption. His team relied on trusted allies, such as Michigan Republican Party Chair Pete Hoekstra, to get the platform ready in record time and passed by an overwhelming 84-14 vote of the RNC.
"The president has been intimately involved with this platform," Hoekstra says. "It’s streamlined and condensed.”
It also fully reflects Trump's style and desires.
"The platform is reflective of what the campaign is about and what Republicans believe," LaCivita says.
While Trump's early campaigning may have focused on the past, this convention hopes to keep the emphasis on the future.
“It’s a very forward-looking approach,” LaCivita says, “but it’s a forward-looking approach based on a contrast of what currently is.”
Trump's reserved approach since Biden's meltdown debate performance has benefited the former president.
In addressing the shooting, Trump will seek to present an aura of invincibility that will stand in stark contrast to Biden's vulnerability.
Bishop, who was on the field in 2017 when a gunman opened fire on a bipartisan baseball game in Washington D.C., said just as that attack led to a brief moment of national unity, Trump can use his shooting to call the country together.
"If he can strike the right tone and call on all of us to come together in toning down the rhetoric he can show some leadership, if he can have a clear impact on people," Bishop says. "It's a chance for Trump to show strong leadership."