It’s 3:42 in the hot heart of Texas, and the floor of the American Airlines Center in Dallas is a blood-red miasma of dancing elephants. Under the moody crimson lights washing over the crowd at the first ever Republican (Midterm) National Convention,
middle-aged peroxide blondes in sparkly American flag cowboy hats sway to the raspy belt of Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero.” Men in suits and silver belt buckles and leather boots sheepishly bop the “KEEP THE MAJORITY” signs distributed by organizers. The stage is empty right now. Large, menacing images of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Kamala Harris loom over the crowd. None of them are running this cycle.
If I look directly across the floor, toward the entrances to the still mostly empty box seats and nosebleeds, the bright white doorways catching the daylight of downtown Dallas are harsh and blinding. Outside the air-conditioned arena, there’s a fight raging. The GOP is at war with itself and its voters. The casualties of this political cycle — spiraling around Donald Trump’s war-ravaged, economically disastrous two years back in office — will likely touch every Republican state delegation.
But the president wants a party, and you can’t dance with the lights on.
Eighteen months ago Dallas would have been an auspicious location for this event. Trump, the keynote speaker for the first night of the two-day conference, made generational gains among Hispanics in 2024. Governor Greg Abbott promised to carve out five shiny new Republican House seats into the state’s electoral map. The Lone Star State had become the southern Mecca of the techno-conservative revolution looking to find roots outside of Silicon Valley. But the right’s gains among Hispanics have been erased, a Democrat is well-positioned to win a Texas Senate seat for the first time in decades, and one can’t help but notice the sense of panic permeating the GOP’s biggest party of the year.
It’s obvious what the president had in mind in pulling this party together. The scene feels like a pantomime of the 2024 nomination conference, held as Democrats scrambled to find their footing amid ever-intensifying concerns regarding Biden’s ability to govern, much less campaign, and just days after Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. This week, a large photo of the now-president and the bandage he was sporting over his ear during his nominating convention hangs conspicuously on one of the arena’s concourses. The one-year anniversary of the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk — which coincided with the second day of the convention — supplanted Trump’s close call with death as the avatar for leftist violence against persecuted conservatives. Republican after Republican trotted out the same lines of attack that propelled them to victory two years ago:
Killer migrants that rape and murder angelic young women. Leftist radicals looking to inflict police-free anarchy on American cities. The mutilation of children being subjected to horrific sex change surgeries. The threat of Sharia Law from Arab and Muslim Americans — like Zohran Mamdani, Abdul El-Sayed, and Hasan Piker — and the looming scourge of a communist, democratic-socialist takeover. Bread lines and authoritarianism are certain under Democratic rule, Donald Trump Jr. insisted. You may not be happy with us right now, but it could be so much worse.
“I’m not asking anybody to agree on every single policy of the administration; what I am asking you to do is to recognize the contrast with the radicals and recognize the achievements of the last 18 months,” Vice President JD Vance pleaded with the audience during his Thursday night keynote.
The president self soothes via adulation. Yet even in his own Wednesday night speech, Trump reluctantly acknowledged “it’s going to take a little bit longer than the midterms” to normalize the spike in energy prices caused by his ongoing war in Iran. He attempted to blame the ongoing affordability crisis on his predecessor and the Democratic Party. To his and the GOP’s frustration, voters — particularly independents — are not blaming it all on the opposition. They have handed Trump a historically low approval rating, and are tossing MAGA aligned Republicans out of Congress in primaries. The convention was nowhere near at capacity, despite local offers of free tickets and a lineup of MAGA favorites. In the absence of a clear argument for why voters should continue to trust the mercurial, impulsive, self-serving men dictating the direction of the party, Trump is turning to outright bribery.
“If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000. It will be called the Trump dividend. Congratulations,” Trump told the audience on Wednesday night. Vote Republican, you might get $5,000. It screams confidence in your prospects, does it not? Never mind that Republicans currently control both chambers of Congress, and that if this was about anything other than attempting to buy votes they could pass — or make a show of attempting to pass — the payments before the midterms. Never mind that Trump has repeatedly promised no-strings-attatched government checks that never materialize. Never mind that the tariffs that would supposedly fund the payments haven’t generated even a fifth of the revenue that would be required. Never mind that — as Senate candidate Ken Paxton was reminded in a live interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier — these people are supposed to be fiscal conservatives.
Even among the Trump-friendly crowd, there was a degree of skepticism. “I don’t think that a political promise should be made like that,” one woman told me. “The votes don’t come from being bought, so yeah, I’m a little disappointed.”
Two young men — locals who said they attended the conference mostly out of curiosity — said the promise was the “stupidest thing” they’d heard from a politician.
The promise crystallized the rot at the core of the convention: the party’s total inability to respond to the concerns of the voters they need to retain from 2024, and insistence on filling the void with culture war dog whistles and cult-like devotion to Trump. Several high-profile candidates seem to realize this isn’t a recipe for success this November. Maine Senator Susan Collins — facing a tight reelection battle in Maine — was conspicuously absent, as was Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan. Several candidates in critical House races considered potential tossups also ditched the president’s festivities, including Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa), and David Valadao (R-Calif.)..
Those who did make their way to Dallas played second fiddle to the president, vice president, and members of the administration. Paxton, a host candidate caught in an incredibly tight race to preserve the last three decades of Republican dominance in Texas, became a punchline in Trump’s monologuing.
“I don’t like the way Ken Paxton dresses. I don’t really like the way Ken talks. I don’t really like the way he looks. I don’t like it,” Trump said of the attorney general, who has been nothing but subservient and loyal to his agenda. Paxton, perpetually putty faced and on the spot, made a halfheated attempt at a forced smile. It was not reassuring. The party honored him and his service to the MAGA movement by putting him in a forgettable time slot where he delivered a forgettable speech in which he highlighted Trump’s record over his own and warned that his opponent James Talarico “wants to transition your kids.”
Trump made fun of Paxton again while speaking on Thursday. “I said something yesterday, and I don’t know if he’ll ever talk to me again,” the president said before repeating the same insults.
Greg Abbott, who has governed the state for over a decade, promised to “fully ban Sharia Law in Texas,” a state with less than 500,000 Muslim residents within a population of 32 million. He promised to ban China, Iran, and Russia from buying land in the state — as if they were readily able to do so in the first place. “The Democrats running on the ticket in Texas, they’re gaslighting the public about affordability,” as if economic concerns and inflation aren’t the issues of top concern to Texas voters this cycle.
Republicans begged voters to preserve the Republican trifecta for just two more years. Just until 2028, then we can fight about who was at fault for the collapse of the economy, and the war in Iran, or the unraveling of our alliances. “Can we please, we’ve got to take care of business this November, then we’ll worry about what comes next,” Vance asked the audience at one point. His speech felt like the sort of address one would give once they won the nomination, the soft launch of ambitions beyond the vice presidency. But this is, and always has been, and for the foreseeable future will be, Trump’s party. No second in command will be permitted to outshine him.
Whatever glow Vance was basking in was quickly dimmed under the radioactive sun of the president. Who wrote himself into the second night of programming and — just to drive the point home — reiterated his first night demand that voters imagine that it’s him that’s on the ballot.
As Trump closed out the night, American tenor Christopher Macchio belted “Nessun Dorma” as a rain of red, white, blue, and gold balloons fell from the ceiling. The aria, performed in the third act of Giacomo Puccini’s opera Turandot, is a favorite of the president.
Trump smirked into the audience alongside Macchio as his voice arced towards its final crescendo. “Vincero, vincero, vincero.”
“I will win, I will win, I will win.” A declaration by the prince Calaf that he will secure the hand of the princess Turandot, whether she wants it or not. The chorus surrounding his avowal is that of Turandot’s subjects, lamenting fate.
Trump was totally alone onstage as he listened.
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