Convention reveals how Donald Trump transformed the GOP

MILWAUKEE — The Republican Party has undergone a transformation that has been years in the making and culminated in the end of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. The four-day gathering showed how former President Donald Trump has reshaped the Republican Party since he launched his first presidential campaign nine years ago.

Mary Frances Forrester, an RNC delegate from North Carolina, told Spectrum News there was an energy and sense of unity in the convention hall she hadn’t seen in years. She said she’s been attending the convention since 2004 and this year felt different. Forrester said the Trump assassination attempt “had a lot to do with it.”

“It’s almost like 9/11 when someone attacks your country and the office of the presidency that brought us together,” she said.

Forrester said the party had already rallied around Trump, but the assassination attempt on him had further strengthened those feelings. His own story mirrors the party’s.

In 2016, Forrester was a delegate for Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who fought fiercely against Trump for the nomination. At that year’s convention, Cruz called on the nation to “vote your conscience.”

This year, Cruz is firmly on Trump’s side. He opened his convention speech by declaring, “God bless Donald J. Trump.”

Other former Trump rivals and detractors are now on his side, including his running mate, Republican Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Haley was not initially invited to the convention, but she was granted one after the assassination attempt on Trump. Haley also released all the delegates she won in Trump’s primary election.

“You don’t have to agree with Trump 100 percent to vote for him,” Haley said during her convention speech.

Republican Trump critics, such as Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican who was also the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, were absent from Milwaukee. Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara addressed the convention as co-chair of the national party.

“Over those eight years, Trump really set the tone for the party and what it believes in,” said Mordecaid Lee, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Lee said the party’s reshaping is most visible in its new vision, which mirrors Trump’s worldview, which includes an isolationist foreign policy and tariffs on imports. Those views are the opposite of those of the old GOP.

“His hold on the Republican base is so strong that he has overwhelmingly crushed his opponents, even those who are trying to outdo Trump. So this is a political phenomenon of charisma and power that is hard to see very often in American politics,” Lee said.

Back on the ground, signs were everywhere saying that the party had been molded in Trump’s image and that for some, it had taken years to get there.

“Our founding fathers wanted us to have different opinions. They wanted us to zigzag. They wanted us to zigzag, but we all wanted the same goal,” Forrester said.