2024 US Presidential Election

[Thumpalumpacus]

CHICAGO — The political star power and unity on display at the Democratic National Convention, where Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack and Michelle Obama have lauded Vice President Harris, is putting in stark contrast the divisions in the GOP led by former President Trump.

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While former President Clinton on Wednesday became the third Democratic president to speak at the United Center in Chicago, there were no Bushes or Cheneys at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

There wasn’t anyone representing the memory of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the party’s nominee in 2008. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), the party’s 2012 nominee who says he won’t even vote for Trump, wasn’t there either.

Even Trump’s own former vice president, Mike Pence, was absent from Milwaukee and has said he will be voting for someone other than Trump as president.

[...]

Frank Luntz, a GOP pollster who was an architect of the strategy behind the 1994 Republican revolution that vaulted former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) to power, said while the Milwaukee convention was all about Trump, the Chicago convention is more like a “movement.”

“One is about an individual and the other is about a movement,” said Luntz, who was in Chicago on Wednesday to help moderate a panel discussion about promoting career technical education in high school.

“And in the end, a movement usually does better. This is why Harris is doing so well and he’s doing so badly,” Luntz added. “With Harris, there are so many people on the same side. With Trump, it’s just Donald Trump.”

[...]

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In Milwaukee, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who has been in his post for a little less than a year, urged his party to “unite” and “send President Donald Trump back to the White House.”

But Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), the longest-serving Senate party leader in history who played a major role in confirming three Trump-appointed justices to the Supreme Court, attended but did not get a speaking slot.

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.), the 2012 GOP vice presidential candidate who helped Trump deliver his signature legislative achievement, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, skipped the event entirely, even though he is from nearby Janesville, Wis.

He made the decision to boycott a Trump-centered convention in early 2023, telling a local television station: “I’ll be here if it’s not someone named Trump.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/48...divisions/

I think Luntz makes a really good point here. Republicans are mouthing support largely out of fear of the MAGAt branch, not out of loyalty to Trump or any shared vision.