Is American politics turning conservative?

Trump's big acceptance speech and the GOP platform.

For the time being, Donald Trump and the Republican Party are dominating American politics – displaying unity, choosing JD Vance for vice-president, backed by Hulk Hogan. Trump’s dominance of his party is now complete. There is no apparent internal faction opposing him. Republicans are presently confident of winning in November.

Meanwhile the Democrats are in disarray under enfeebled leadership. Biden is reportedly coming around slowly to an acceptance of the bleeding obvious: that he cannot win and that he should stand aside while there’s time. Nonetheless, the polling nerds still calculate that the election could go either way.

A political realignment?

The Republicans are expanding their appeal. Some speakers at the convention were not the kinds you’d expect: notably the leader of the Teamsters union, Sean O’Brien, and rapper Amber Rose. The latter came out as a Trump “convert”, just as JD Vance seems to have had a Road-to-Damascus moment. But it’s not all aimed at the evangelicals. The appearances by O’Brien and Rose were controversial, but they could signify an underlying electoral realignment, as Republicans reach out to capture workers, the young and the non-white – as distinct from church, business and corporate leaders. Republicans are expanding their reach from the Wall Street Journal to the Fox News to the Youtube to the TikTok generation.

This could be as significant as the pitch to the evangelicals pulled off by Reagan.

At his first cameo appearance at this week’s Convention, Donald Trump was looking subdued and emotional, with bandaged ear, following his brush with death. We saw a vulnerable side of him – perhaps for the first time. People who hate him may be suppressing compassion, but, if they do, then they resemble the heartless kind of person they accuse him of being. They’re in a difficult spot right now.

It would nonetheless be naive to suppose that, as a political leader, Trump’s basic values and priorities changed in the course of one fateful afternoon.

What did Trump’s acceptance speech tell us?

Other than relating what he experienced when he was shot at – a story he’ll only tell once, he said, as it’s “too painful to tell” – it was a normal Trump rally speech, although comparatively subdued in tone. The events of the weekend had been “providential”, he said, and “I had God on my side”.

After some sentimental reflections and expressions of thanks, he got down to policy and promotion, in his repetitious rambling style that sometimes goes off-script. “I am trying to buy your vote”, he told Wisconsin, when mentioning a programme of economic developments. When he was president “we had the greatest economy in the history of the world”. “Russia took nothing” and there were “no new wars”. He blamed what’s happening in Gaza on Iran, and said it would not have happened if he’d been president. When he gets back into office, “the years of weakness, war and chaos will be over”. He’ll pay off debt, lower taxes, and create incentives to bring manufacturing back. “Every disaster we are now facing will be fixed” and “I will bring back the American Dream”. On Day One it’ll be “drill baby drill” and “close the borders”. “We will unite” and “success will bring us together”.

He attacked opponents on a few occasions. He talked about a “nation in decline” and an “illegal immigration crisis”. He mentioned “the green new scam”, rather than Green New Deal. All he said about the 2020 election was that “they used Covid to cheat”. (No, Donald, you lost.)

America will be better and “more united than ever before” if he’s re-elected, he said. But that’s the sort of thing that politicians say. He went on too long and I was glad when it was over. So, what are their actual policies?

What does the Republican Party’s manifesto say?

In the previous post I looked at Project 2025 – which is a 900-page conservative wish-list and not a party manifesto. The actual election manifesto of the Republican Party is a thankfully brief and plain document.

The 2024 GOP Platform is guided by America-First protectionism, in both the social and economic senses (immigration and trade policies).

Tariffs on foreign-made goods and stopping the Chinese from buying American assets are big issues. This includes saving the American auto industry by preventing the importation of Chinese vehicles, and implementing “Buy American Hire American” policies. (There’s a counter-argument that a trade war causes “more pain than gain” for Americans, however. Import prices rise, jobs are lost, growth is curtailed, stock prices drop, and retaliatory actions deprive producers of a large market.)

The Republicans want to boost the economy and reduce inflation, of course. To fuel that, so to speak, the manifesto says, “we will become Energy Independent, and even Dominant again”, based on the claim that Americans have “more liquid gold under our feet than any other Nation”. (That apparently is not true, but it’s a technical question that depends on what and how one counts. And this is not a climate-friendly policy!)

The manifesto is strong on tax cuts for workers, and on social security and Medicare for seniors.

It warns that they’ll undertake “the largest deportation program in American history”.

They “stand with Israel”. (Biden does too.)

They have a back-to-basics education policy. They “will ensure children are taught fundamentals like Reading, History, Science, and Math, not Leftwing propaganda”. And they’ll “defund schools that engage in inappropriate political indoctrination of our children”. (I presume that refers to critical race and gender theory.)

They will “close the Department of Education in Washington, D.C. … and let the States run our educational system”. They’ll restore parental rights and promote “patriotic civics education”. (The latter could be classed as right-wing propaganda, depending on who does it.)

There’s moral conservatism behind that. In economic policy, though, the GOP is no longer the party of Ronald Reagan or of Reaganism. Nationalism and protectionism have replaced the globalisation and free trade of the neoliberal era.

What’s the upshot likely to be?

Some American political commentators are now calling it “Trump’s election to lose”. They mean he can only lose if, due to some fatal flaw in his character (and he does have a few), he really screws up, and if the Democrats get a better leader.

The Democrats have to solve their leadership crisis – urgently – or else. They could lose the White House and find themselves out-voted in House and Senate as well. With the Supreme Court now stacked with a conservative majority, the liberal left could lose control over all three branches of federal government. A conservative minority may end up ruling for some time to come – and gerrymandering district boundaries to make sure it stays that way.

A lot will happen between now and November though.

Image from Singapore’s CNA, courtesy of Kendrick Loo at Taylor & Francis.