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Tensions between the establishment and a handful of newcomer party zealots, members of a faction calling itself “Truly Grassroots for Trump,” have forced a last-minute reorganization of the list of 54 citizens who will travel to Wisconsin next week to celebrate Donald Trump’s choice as the Republican presidential nominee in November.
“Alarming irregularities,” the report said. Missouri Independenthad managed to sideline some old hands in the conservative political establishment in the state, such as two candidates for governor: a senator and a secretary of state. These longtime Republicans now dominate the delegation, which leaves the radicals a little more on the sidelines.
In Arizona, three Republicans recently indicted for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election to keep Donald Trump in power have been knowingly selected by local Republicans as delegates heading to Milwaukee in a few days. The group also includes notorious conspiracy theorists and insurrectionists. And with that comes trouble…
Donald Trump’s campaign recently cleaned out the ranks of those Arizona delegates after being informed that a small group was seeking to foment a rebellion against Donald Trump at the convention, the Washington PostThese delegates dreamed of replacing the ex-president with his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a leading figure of the ultraconservatives within Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.
Concerns about the former president’s new criminal status and his possible imprisonment following his conviction in New York in June, but also fears about his entourage, too close, according to several of these extremist activists, to the deep state — this State invented by conspiracy theorists to simplify their understanding of the world — would have justified the movement… nipped in the bud as the republican high mass approached.
“It’s theoretically possible that some delegates will oppose Donald Trump at the Milwaukee convention, but that’s highly unlikely,” political scientist James McCann of Purdue University in Indiana said in an interview. “Sure, there’s likely to be some visible anti-Trump activism in Milwaukee, from both the moderate and radical sides of the party, but nothing that would disrupt the former president’s nomination.”
Avoiding hiccups
Donald Trump’s entourage has been working hard behind the scenes for months to ensure that nothing hinders the destiny that the populist has been writing for years. And, above all, to avoid the hiccups that accompanied his rise within the Republicans during the 2016 campaign.
During the convention that year, there were cries calling for the rejection of this candidacy, which was considered at the time to be frivolous and, above all, too egocentric.
“During the primaries, Republican voters showed little desire to abandon Donald Trump as their candidate, despite his 2020 defeat and his convictions and indictments for multiple crimes,” said Rosalyn Cooperman, chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia, in a statement. The duty in the last few days. “Donald Trump has managed to intimidate Republicans in Congress into getting behind him, and especially into not expressing their discomfort with him so as not to attract his anger. In this context, there is currently no viable path for another Republican candidate in this presidential election.”
The replacement of a presidential candidate from one of the two major parties chosen by voters in the primaries is an event that has never occurred in the modern history of American political conventions. “There have been cases of internal partisan divisions,” notes James McCann, citing the 1980 Democratic convention, at which Senator Ted Kennedy went to war with President Jimmy Carter to pull the party to the left. At the 1992 Republican convention, Patrick Buchanan also undermined the unity of the party and its candidate, George Bush Sr. “These divisions usually tarnish the image of the candidate who is elected, but they do not prevent his nomination.”
To avoid this scenario, Donald Trump’s campaign team has pulled out all the stops to keep the choreography of this tight convention (and above all centered) on the former president — and incidentally on the running mate that the populist is preparing to choose.
The vote of the 5,000 delegates from across the country, gathered in Wisconsin from July 15, should therefore be a mere formality.
Electoral program
Trumpists also stormed the convention committee charged with drafting the party’s platform for the November presidential election, a document that reads more like a declaration of faith in Donald Trump than a statement of the party’s values, although the latter is the traditional approach.
Unveiled Monday, the 16-page program echoes, among other things, the populist’s many statements on the radical regulation of immigration at the southern border and on customs tariffs targeting Chinese products, in addition to renewing his attacks on the administration of Joe Biden, which he holds responsible for inflation as well as the duration of the conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine.
“Political conventions serve primarily to promote the party’s ‘brand’ to the general public in the run-up to the presidential election and to highlight certain elements favourable to the candidate who was chosen in the primaries,” says James McCann.
“Internal conflict would distract from these messages. And to avoid that, Trump’s entourage is likely to conduct considerable surveillance during this convention to stifle any dissent before it becomes the center of attention.”
A center that Donald Trump, a leader with autocratic overtones whose political strength is based in part on the cult of his personality, necessarily prefers to keep to himself.