Op-Ed: Trump convention speech: He hasn’t changed since the primaries
There wasn’t much subtlety in Donald Trump’s acceptance speech – or much innovation, either. Beforehand, some Republicans ventured that this was their nominee’s biggest opportunity to retool his agenda for the general election – to present a softer, more inclusive, more thoughtful Trump. That wasn’t the Trump who showed up in Cleveland.
Instead, his acceptance speech was a medley of greatest hits from his primary season: illegal immigration as a source of violent crime, “bad trade deals” as the cause of income stagnation, and rampant corruption in Washington as the cause of every other ill.
That, plus the new theme Trump has emphasized since five police officers were killed in Dallas: law and order.
He announced his intention upfront: “I am the law-and-order candidate.”
But what, exactly, did that mean? He wasn’t specific, beyond appointing “the best prosecutors and law enforcement officials in the country.”
Nor did Trump offer any new details about his plans for the economy, which might logically have been the centerpiece of a speech launching the general election campaign. Instead, he provided the same broad assertions that carried him through the primary campaign: that with a combination of big tax cuts and new trade deals, “trillions of dollars will start flowing into our country.” It’s nice to think so, but it would be even nicer to see a few details.
Trump did make a few rhetorical concessions to the fact that he’s now seeking the votes of all Americans, not just the conservative minority who vote in Republican primaries. He made a point of saying his law-and-order crusade is meant to be inclusive – to ensure that “young Americans in Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Ferguson [have] the same right to live out their dreams as any other child in America.”
And he completed the gradual evolution of his noxious proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States; now, instead, he wants to ban travelers from “any nation that has been compromised by terrorism.” That’s better, but confusing: Does he mean France as well as Syria?
The general election Trump is no clearer, and no more disciplined in his thinking, than the Trump of the primaries was. What you saw then is what you’ll get – in both the general election campaign and in the White House, if Trump should win.
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