After Donald Trump narrowly avoided an assassination attempt because the Secret Service was more worried about avoiding slippery roofs , the former president barely had time to change his now-famous ear bandage before appearing at the Republican National Convention, where he was announced as the official GOP nominee for president.
Despite the concerns of so many during the brutal primary race, the feeling in the room was one of unity, with the entire party rallying around Trump and his inner circle. Like it or not, it’s Trump’s party, and almost everyone is on board.
Meanwhile, with Republicans circling the wagons, the Democrats are trying to stop a dementia-addled 81-year-old from driving their one remaining wagon off a cliff. And we need to keep it that way.
As videos of the convention flooded social media, there was a significant purist backlash that threatened to damage both the unity we need to win in November and the future survival of the conservative movement.
One example was the bizarre, and frankly bigoted, response to Harmeet Dhillon’s Sikh prayer, as if religious liberty isn’t a foundational pillar of American conservatism.
But the most notable example was the response to the inclusion of Amber Rose , a pro-abortion and pro-LGBT public figure and founder of Los Angeles’s SlutWalk, who has become a vocal supporter of Trump.
Sure, if Amber Rose becomes the face of the GOP, we’re in trouble. But what if she’s just a small part of a broader strategy to expand our base?
Here’s what these purists fail to understand: Whether you like it or not, elections are quite literally popularity contests. More specifically, they are often unpopularity contests. And the brutal fact is that many conservative positions, such as those surrounding abortion, healthcare, race, LGBT issues, education, and gun rights, are unpopular.
If your goal is simply to sit back and complain, then elections don’t matter. If anything, Democratic Party victories can be good for business! But if your goal is to grow the conservative movement and make conservative ideas popular again, then we need to win elections.
And how do we win elections? By growing the conservative movement and making conservative ideas popular again!
This circular logic means that we have to make compromises, pick our battles, and take a long-term approach in order to break the cycle.
We do not make conservative ideas popular by preaching to the choir, but by exposing new people to certain conservative ideas, with the hope of exposing them to all conservative ideas.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that we should never be concerned about the wider direction of the GOP under any central component — in this case, MAGA — or that we should be willing to embrace any value, no matter how radically left-wing, just to “win.” But we must also understand that there is a huge difference between making our tent bigger and making the doors to the tent bigger.
Only time will tell whether the inclusion of figures such as Amber Rose is a symptom of expanding the tent or making the tent more welcoming. But if we want conservatism to grow and spread, then we can no longer preach to the choir in a purist echo chamber, leaving those who don’t conform to some holier-than-thou set of behaviors to be absorbed by the ever-welcoming Left.
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To change the country, we need to win. To win, we need to reach new people. To reach new people, we have to be willing to reach out to new people.
And reaching out to new people isn’t always just a diversity and inclusion stunt.
Ian Haworth is a columnist, speaker, and podcast host. You can find him on Substack and follow him on X at @ighaworth .
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