MILWAUKEE — There has been a years-long transformation of the GOP that culminated at the end of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. The four-day gathering showed how much former President Donald Trump has remade the Republican Party since he launched his first presidential campaign nine years ago. 

What You Need To Know

  • The RNC showed how much former President Donald Trump has remade the Republican Party since he launched his first presidential campaign

  • Former Trump rivals and critics are now his side, from his running mate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, to a former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley

  • The party’s overhaul is most apparent in its new vision, which reflects a Trump worldview that includes an isolationist foreign policy and tariffs on imports

 

Mary Frances Forrester, a RNC delegate from North Carolina, told Spectrum News there has been an energy and feeling of unity on the convention floor that she hasn’t seen in years. She said she has attended the convention since 2004 and that this year felt different. Forrester said Trump’s attempted assassination “had a lot to do with that.”

“It’s almost like 9/11 when someone attacks your country and the office of the presidency that brought us together,” she said.  

Forrester said the party had already rallied around Trump, but the attempt on his life made those feelings even stronger. Her own story mirrors that of the party.

In 2016, Forrester was a delegate for Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who bitterly fought Trump for the nomination. During the convention that year, Cruz called on the nation to “vote your conscience.” 

This year, Cruz is firmly in Trump’s camp. He kicked off his convention speech, saying, “God bless Donald J. Trump.”

Other former Trump rivals and critics are now on his side, from his running mate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, to a former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Haley was not originally invited to the convention, but got one after Trump’s attempted assassination. Haley also released all the delegates she won during the primary elections to Trump.

“You don’t have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him,” Haley said during her convention address.  

Republican critics of Trump, like Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who was also the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, were nowhere to be found in Milwaukee. While Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara, addressed the convention as a co-chair of the national party.

“In these eight years, Trump has really set the tone of the party and what the party believes in,” said Mordecaid Lee, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Lee said the party’s overhaul is most apparent in its new vision, which reflects a Trump worldview that includes an isolationist foreign policy and tariffs on imports. These views were the opposite of the old GOP.

“His hold on the Republican base is so strong that he just overwhelmingly crushed his opponents, even opponents who are trying to out-Trump Trump and so this is a political phenomenon of charisma and power that is hard to see very often in American politics,” Lee said.  

Back on the floor, there were signs everywhere the party has been molded in Trump’s image and for some it took years to get there. 

“Our founding fathers meant for us to have different opinions. They meant for us to zig. They meant for us to zag, but we all wanted the same end,” Forrester said.