By Dan McLaughlin
Tuesday, August 25, 2020
This convention has forefronted a lot of speakers
and voices appealing to the American values of tolerance, inclusion, and
welcoming, including a naturalization ceremony; Melania Trump, Nikki Haley, and
Cuban immigrant Maximo Alvarez talking movingly about theirs and their
families’ immigrant stories; and a host of African-American speakers, such as
Tim Scott, Herschel Walker, and Daniel Cameron. We’ve heard a lot about America
as the land of opportunity, about overcoming discrimination, and about
opportunity-spreading policies such as school choice. Many of these speakers
were compelling on their own terms. Melania’s speech, despite her accent and
obvious discomfort as a public speaker in a second language, struck a lot of
great themes. All of them are fully consistent with conservative principles and
Republican traditions.
Which leads me to suggest that perhaps this
administration should have considered earlier how popular many of these themes
are, and done more to build its rhetoric and policies around them. That doesn’t
mean abandoning serious, hard tasks such as more stringent enforcement of the
immigration laws on the books, but balancing them with pro-legal immigrant
policies, for example, doesn’t need to be inconsistent with that. There are a
lot more ways that other Republicans have tried to make the GOP an inclusive
party, and some of Donald Trump’s partisans are prone to scoff at that. But
this convention shows that even the Trump campaign recognizes the value and
virtue, at least in political terms, of an inclusive message.
No comments:
Post a Comment