Convention capped Trump’s comeback, Vance is no ‘fake’ and other commentary

Analyst: Convention Capped Trump’s Comeback

“If the Republicans’ lead in the polls holds through November, the Milwaukee Trump-fest will be remembered as the bell lap that heralded perhaps the most spectacular political comeback in American history,” muses RealClearPolitics’ Carl M. Cannon.

“Just two months ago, Democrats hoped — with some reason — that Trump would be in jail by now,” but in Milwaukee, Trump delivered “a lengthy speech to a Republican Party he has thoroughly molded in his own image. A political party that until recently was proud to champion free trade and internationalism” is “now officially and unabashedly protectionist and inward-looking at both the top and bottom of the 2024 national ticket.”

Trump “re-conquering the Republican Party” turned out “to never really be in doubt, though Trump realized it before anyone else.”

Trump’s win in 2016 “forced many Americans to reexamine their own beliefs about politics and society. J.D. Vance was no exception,” explians Zaid Jilani at Compact .

Vance once saw poor whites as “victims of their own self-destructive behaviors and counterproductive mindsets”; now he denounces “corporations for failing to live up to their responsibilities to workers, families, and communities.”

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“Vance’s most dramatic shift wasn’t his reassessment of Trump’s character” — after once suggesting he might govern like Hitler — “but his embrace of a populist political agenda.”

While “fellow Republicans take Vance’s populism seriously,” the left calls him a “fake.”

“But the left should also realize that you can’t improve economic conditions for ordinary Americans with just one faction in one party on your side.”

“The GOP seems to be leaning into its emerging identity as a working-class party,” observes The Liberal Patriot’s Ruy Teixeira .

“It’s pretty standard now for Republicans to do better than Democrats among working-class (noncollege) voters.”

And “judging by this year’s campaign” — the GOP platform, for one, and veep-nominee J.D. Vance’s rhetoric — “Republicans intend to deepen their roots in America’s working class.”

Democrats seem to think “the GOP’s big bet on the working class” can’t “possibly pay off due to the party’s obvious hypocrisy, incoherent policy ideas, and traditional business-oriented commitments.”

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Yet polls show “it already is paying off.”

Trump’s appeal to non-college-educated voters “is a reality that must be reckoned with.”

“Rachel Maddow thinks it’s very interesting,” that Sen. J.D. Vance named his “venture capital firm after a magical object from the Lord of the Rings,” smirks Reason’s Robby Soave .

She even described J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved trilogy as a sort of wellspring of inspiration for far-right nomenclature, noting: “Peter Thiel, a billionaire venture capitalist and supporter of Vance, also named one of his companies, Palantir, after a LOTR item.”

But, notes Soave, “moderates also love LOTR. So do liberals, lefties and the completely apolitical.”

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Tolkien’s work isn’t “devoid of political themes”; he was an environmentalist with “libertarian tendencies” who loathed authoritarianism.

The Lord of the Rings “is not a far-right text, despite whatever Maddow would have her viewers believe.”

After the shooting of Donald Trump, “Biden’s insistence that his administration will tolerate no political violence deserves further exploration in a different context,” argues Liel Leibovitz at City Journal .

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines stated: “We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”

Says Leibovitz: With agents of “an enemy country” now found “to have agitated for uprisings on America’s campuses and in our streets: arrests, deportations, sanctions, and other defensive measures must follow.”

Those Iran-funded operations “have resulted in violence against American citizens on American soil” — yet local officials have given “the perpetrators a pass” and elite institutions “excuse” and “protect the worst offenders.”

The prez “is right to call out political violence,” but given “Iran’s role in provoking it,” the administration must “do something about it.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

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