The Grand New Party

MILWAUKEE—The crowd waiting to enter the Fiserv Forum on the last day of the Republican National Convention included Texans wearing cowboy hats, Hawaiians with lei-style lanyards, Illinois delegates in stovepipe hats, and members of the Black Conservative Federation sporting sparkly rapper pendants that said “Team Trump.”

Regardless of how the attendees chose to express their support for former President Donald Trump, the Republican Party had a single message for them: “Come on in.”

“I think this time I see a Republican Party that is becoming more inclusive,” Alaskan delegate Sandy Blomfield told WORLD. “Republicans have maybe been a closed group for a long time, and we’re opening up and inviting more people in.”

As the Republican Party works to open its doors wider, the attempted assassination of Trump on July 13 has given interested Americans a stronger reason to step inside. On the last night of the convention, popular former WWE wrestler Hulk Hogan explained his newfound enthusiasm for Trump: “What happened last week when they took a shot at my hero, when they tried to kill the next president of the United States—enough was enough. And I said let Trump-a-mania run wild, brother.”

Coming out of the convention, Trump leads President Joe Biden by 3 or more percentage points in several major national polls and polling averages. As Democrats wrestle with whether to replace Biden as their nominee, Republicans under Trump are experiencing a renaissance that most of the party’s traditional conservatives say is a welcome change.

“Normally in other conventions, there’s a fracture, but this year is different because of the amount of unity that we have,” Pennsylvania delegate Mike McMullen said. This year was his sixth time attending the national convention. “Nikki Haley spoke, Ron DeSantis spoke. We are unified as a Republican Party, and that’s not happened in a long, long time. And going forward to Nov. 5, it’s going to be a landslide victory for Trump fans. We’re going to win states we’ve never won before.”

Going into the convention, the GOP shortened and simplified its platform from 66 pages to 16. It replaced detailed policy proposals for protecting traditional marriage and passing laws that save babies from abortion with generalizations about the sanctity of marriage and support for families and life.

The Log Cabin Republicans, a small, pro-LGBT faction within the RNC, celebrated the revisions.

“This platform sends a powerful message to LGBT conservatives across the country that we are not only welcome in the Republican Party but a part of the movement to Make America Great Again,” Log Cabin Republicans President Charles Moran wrote in a Monday statement. “This is a platform of unity. We applaud President Trump for his visionary, inclusive, and consistent leadership, without which this moment wouldn’t be possible.”

At the convention, the RNC intentionally shined a spotlight on nontraditional Trump supporters. On the first night, California lawyer and RNC committeewoman Harmeet Dhillon offered a Sikh prayer to Waheguru, whom she called “the one true god.” In a statement later, Dhillon said, “Sikhism is a monotheistic faith—we believe in one God, the same God other monotheistic faiths worship.”

The same night, model Amber Rose gave the final speech. She is famous for dating rapper Kanye West for two years and appearing on reality TV shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race. In 2016, she said she would move to Canada if Trump won election to the White House. But on Monday night, she endorsed him.

“People have to do their research,” Rose said. “I watched all the rallies. And I started meeting so many of you, his red-hat-wearing supporters," she said. “And that’s when it hit me: These are my people. This is where I belong. I put the red hat on, too.”

Some delegates walked out before her speech. Rose has vocally supported abortion in the past, and she regularly posts pornographic content on social media. But many in the room said her attendance was an important shift in inclusion for the party, even if they didn’t share her beliefs.

“Personally, I was really happy with the Sikh prayer and Amber Rose,” said Enoch Wes Parry, a delegate from West Virginia. “Regardless of what she believes and how loose her moral compass may be, for the average passerby that doesn’t really care to pay attention to what is on the TikTok thing … that was a very impactful speech.”

While the majority of delegates identified as Christians, and most as evangelicals, they also said they appreciated the purpose of allowing a Sikh prayer.

“Sure, I might not have liked it,” said Tony Blomfield from Alaska. “But I wouldn’t have been overly offended, either. Everybody has a right to their faith, and far be it from me to tell them what to do, and I would certainly not appreciate them telling me how to believe.”

The convention also invited Archbishop Elpidophoros, a Greek Orthodox bishop, and Archbishop Jerome Listecki, who oversees the Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee. Both offered general prayers thanking God for sparing Trump’s life and asking God to bless the assembly. On the final night, Iowa delegate BJ James prayed to St. Michael, asking for protection. A Detroit pastor praised Trump for sitting at a roundtable at his church, paying attention “to the hood because he cares about average, everyday Americans.”

Trump has said he attended an Episcopalian church with his father as a child. As an adult, he rarely attended church and typically does not discuss God. In his nomination acceptance speech, that changed. Trump said he had God on his side and that he was spared only by the grace of God.

“Evangelical Christians have a pretty dominant role in the party,” Eagle Forum Education and Legal Defense Fund president Ed Martin told me. He also serves as the deputy policy director of the RNC platform committee. “But this convention seems to me to have a lot more focus on individuals and a little less on polished politicians.”

Martin predicted an expanded Republican base would ensure victory in November not only for the White House but also down the ballot.

Trump “delivered on abortion,” Martin said. “Most of our politicians run, and they don’t have the guts to do it. They all ran on moving the embassy to Israel, which means a lot to Christians, as well as to the Jews, and he did it.”

Some Republicans caution that the fervor for Trump could fade with some time, and the election remains nearly four months away. A panel in Milwaukee titled “Intra-Party Dissent” featured former Republican U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh, political consultant Craig Snyder, and former Republican and current founder of Principles First Heath Mayo. They argued that the diversity of RNC speakers represented more aspiration than reality. They said Trump’s populist approach appeals to dissatisfied voters of any type.

“I do think that there are some shifts going on,” Mayo said. “It may not be a racial shift as much as it is a male-versus-female shift more broadly. I wouldn’t read too much into what we see on the stage.”

Despite those disagreements, convention-goers were unified in their disdain for the political left.

“I think the extremism in the Democratic Party is pulling people further away from God and further away from a strong moral compass,” Tony Blomfeld said. “And the Republican Party hopefully can offer an alternative to that sort of a lifestyle and philosophy. The whole thing that we should do is love our neighbor. We may disagree with them, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t live with them.”

When it came to policy, convention speakers focused on top conservative priorities: preserving women’s sports for biological women, expanding oil drilling, mass deportation of illegal immigrants, and lower taxation and inflation. The abortion issue took a backseat, but pro-life delegates I spoke with said that was OK.

“We were founded on Christian principles. We still will succeed on Christian principles of moral upstanding and right moral code,” Parry said. “But what we were also founded on was individual liberty. If we as Christians continue to shut people out and say you're not welcome here, we're going to end up losing elections and losing this country and if that happens, we as Christians will have nowhere to go. The balancing act comes in where we can’t do this in a manner that shuns people that want to join the fight because our fight in the political realm is a rather secular fight.”

Editor’s note: WORLD has corrected Ed Martin’s affiliation, which is with the Eagle Forum Education and Legal Defense Fund, not the Eagle Forum, which is a separate organization.