For GOP Unity: Satisfy Constituents, Understand Trump

One of the most important rules for winning in politics is looking like you’re having fun. By that measure, this past week’s GOP Convention was a hit. While a lot of people were upset after the first night for various reasons, by the end of Donald Trump’s very, very long speech (the meme that has J. D. Vance’s beard having been grown during the speech is a joke, folks), there was a palpable sense of unity among those on the side of Trump. As Terry Bollea, better known to pro wrestling fans as Hulk Hogan, put it as he ripped off his shirt to reveal a “Trump-Vance 2024” shirt, “Trumpamania is running wild!”

Indeed, the coalition that is developing to defeat Biden—or whoever replaces him, if the current palace coup succeeds—is a particularly broad one and thus perhaps linked by thinner bonds than many on the right would like. That is a necessity because we still have a country that’s essentially evenly split. There is no strictly right-wing or conservative majority. And even on the right, the disagreements about economics, culture, and foreign policy that were always present, but manageable because of the unity given by the Cold War, have fully broken out over the last decade. There cannot be a completely ideologically united front if Republicans are to surmount the supremacy that is still held by the Democrats on multiple fronts. As The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland summed it up: “Dems still own legacy media and ballot harvesting. No matter how united Republicans are, how untethered Dems are, and how horribly Dems policies over last 4 years have been, scoring an R win will still be a challenge.”

But assuming the tactical and legal considerations are met, there will have to be a big voting coalition. In order to win, it’s important for the candidates to make sure that all parts of the coalition stay together. It’s also important for all those in this coalition to understand how Trump operates.

Those splits in the coalition are particularly visible when it comes to vice-presidential nominee J. D. Vance. During his speech at the convention, many of those more identified with the classical liberal/libertarian or free market camp of the party were moaning away on X (formerly Twitter) about Vance’s openness to tariffs, the rethinking of antitrust law, and various other positions often seen as verboten. While tariffs have a long history in the Republican Party—and were levied by none other than Ronald Reagan himself on other countries—many hold a position of absolute rejection of tariffs. At the same time, figures on the loosely labeled New Right, most conspicuously Compact founder and editor Sohrab Ahmari, were celebrating Vance’s speech as the death of free market language. Ahmari bragged, “JD’s speech contained exactly zero references to small government, tax cuts, ‘job creators.’”

Yet, in Trump’s speech, there were plenty of nods to traditional free market positions—including Ahmari’s dreaded tax cuts. As has been known for a long time, Trump is a non-dogmatic figure when it comes to policy. This sometimes becomes a weakness, as in his first-term support for a ban on bump stocks, which angered many gun owners. Yet, Trump’s ability to navigate different parts of his own coalition, as on economic matters, is very strong. Part of the reason why so many voters, if not establishment Republicans, came around to Trump during his first term was his ability to understand that deregulation and even tax cuts are still winners. At the same time, despite certain free market desires to turn Social Security into a private system, this does not seem to be a workable political policy.  

A more difficult position may be with social conservatives. The Trump position that abortion is now an issue for the states is certainly a defensible one. Even if it is possible to enact some legislation for the nation on this issue, it may not be prudent to pursue it, given the failure of ballot initiatives to severely limit abortion in a number of states. The big money on the side of abortion has consistently been able to scare enough voters, even in red states such as Kansas. Yet some experience the changes to the party platform as a blow. It opposes late-term abortion and refers to the 14^th Amendment’s Due Process clause, implying that pre-birth humans deserve those protections. Some pro-lifers complain that the opposition to late-term abortion is not explicitly stated to be at the federal level. Further, the platform does pledge to protect IVF, which almost always involves destruction of embryos. And some were disappointed to hear J. D. Vance on July 7 on Meet the Press sounding as if he were personally in favor of making available the abortion drug Mifepristone.

I think many pro-life advocates were satisfied enough to work with the language of the platform. If the defense of IVF is still a problem, it is not clear that the platform precludes federal action on late-term abortions. After all, the invocation of the 14^th Amendment points in the direction of something bigger than state legislation. And the bit about IVF is in the same sentence as opposition to late-term abortion, so federal-level action on this issue would not be precluded. The Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a prominent pro-life organization, released a statement from their president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, observing that the platform gives them what they need to do in defeating abortion extremists: “The Republican Party remains strongly pro-life at the national level.”

I also think the Catholic scholar Pavlos Papadopoulos has made a good case that Vance was really saying that he defers to the Supreme Court decisions that the drug should be available, but Vance has not clarified his position. It would be good if he were to do so. Vance, a serious Catholic whose pro-life record is solid, can be a strong voice in a potential Trump Administration to press the pro-life case both inside and to the public. Signaling that Trump’s decision not to pursue further federal pro-life moves is not a reversal but a prudential decision to focus on other issues would help keep this part of the coalition together.  

Indeed, many of those other issues tie in with concerns of social conservatives. Then-Senator Vance, the Washington Post recently lamented, “was known in the most powerful offices of the State Department as the single biggest obstacle to confirming career ambassadors in the Senate.” And the reason he held up dozens of confirmations for the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America had to do with “gay and lesbian rights, gender transition care and hiring practices related to diversity, equity and inclusion.” In short, Vance was a wall against extreme racial and gender ideology being the dominating concern of America’s diplomatic corps. Emphasizing that role in defeating wokeness will be a great help in keeping the coalition together.

One issue that people in the coalition will have to understand—and indeed should understand from his first term—is that Trump’s art of the deal (the title of his famous book) involves some moves that might make his followers nervous. Trump’s rally speeches this week have cast the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 as something that he thinks of as “extreme,” but about which he doesn’t know much. There is no doubt that Trump probably agrees with many of the proposals in that agenda, but he also knows that it has been flogged about in the media as dangerous and radical. As at least one commentator has argued, by casting Project 2025 as the rightward end of the spectrum, just as the Democrats’ policies are at the leftward end, he can propose to the American people that his own policy agenda will be something conservative but also in the big middle and even moderate.

Besides this tactical aspect, it has the advantage of being true. After all, Trump has his own set of proposals under the name Agenda 47. Much as he has worked with the Heritage Foundation, including many who helped draft their agenda, Donald Trump will make the decisions.

The momentum and the fun that Hulk Hogan announced and displayed are still with the GOP. Big Tech titans such as Elon Musk and Bill Ackman are all in for Trump, while Mark Zuckerberg says he’s “neutral” while expressing admiration for Trump’s courage under fire. Ordinary Americans are also steadily less afraid to wear the famous red MAGA hats in public. Meanwhile, Democrats are at war with each other. Their media adjuncts have been revealed as entirely dishonest communicators—willing to dismiss doubts about Joe Biden’s mental capacity as disinformation one week, ready to shove him into the nursing home the next.                        

To keep that GOP momentum, Donald Trump and J. D. Vance will have to show that the various people assembled in their coalition really have a reason to support it and that they have input on the direction it should take. Meanwhile, voters will have to understand how Trump operates. His vision is patriotic and coherent, an attempt to bind together Americans who love America, reject radical and divisive leftist ideology, and want a government that serves them—not simply large corporations, elite operators, foreign nations, and illegal immigrants. It may not all be 4-D chess, but there’s usually a method to what appears to be his madness. As in his first campaign, it’s important to take Trump seriously if not always literally.

David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. A past Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, he is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X @davidpdeavel.