This week’s midterm GOP convention in Dallas will be a “rally like none other” and a “truly Historic Event,” President Donald Trump said on Truth Social in June when he first announced his unexpected plans for an off-season conservative confab. Despite Trump’s enthusiasm, not everyone in the GOP is sold on making the trek to Texas — especially during a brutal campaign cycle that has pushed many battleground Republicans into an electoral crouch.
Republicans are “privately questioning” whether Trump’s midterm convention “strikes the right tone amid the electorate’s tightening budgets,” all while “diverting candidates from their districts just weeks out from Election Day,” said CNN. The “overarching fear,” though, is that an event “once dubbed ‘Trumpapalooza’” will end up being “far more about promoting the president than the candidates who are actually on the ballot.”
Republicans are staring down a “bleak political environment” in which Trump’s approval is at a “record low,” said The New York Times. GOP candidates in battleground races may therefore be “keeping their distance” from Trump’s Dallas rally, “choosing to stay home and campaign instead.” Republicans face “growing hesitation” about associating themselves with the “polarizing president so close to the election,” said Politico. “More than 70 GOP candidates and members” polled by the outlet revealed that “most either do not plan to attend or are still weighing whether to go.”
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“I can’t control what the president’s going to say at the convention,” Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.), who faces a “tough campaign to keep his central Michigan seat,” said to Politico. “But I can control where I’m at, what I’m doing.”
Still, party officials see the convention as their “best opportunity to rally voters behind Trump’s agenda,” said Reuters, even as some “remain skeptical” that the event can “meaningfully shift voter sentiment.” For organizers, the convention is “expected to serve a familiar purpose as a fundraising and networking hub for candidates and donors.” Many will feel “obliged to attend” in order to “court donors and raise their profiles through media appearances,” said RNC member Oscar Brock to the outlet.
Although traditionally “major party conventions” orient themselves around a “specific item of business” such as “formally nominating” candidates, the Dallas convention has “no such line items,” said The New Republic. Steep attendance costs reflect that the event has been “billed as a big Republican party” for which House members are asked to pay a “minimum of $25,000 to get in the door with a guest,” with “better packages” fetching “closer to $100,000.” The event also features multiple “corporate sponsors” whose funds are “being dumped into a nonprofit that does not have to disclose its donors.”
Given the peculiar funding and “poor planning,” many GOP campaign strategists are “seething” that the convention is “little more than a fundraiser for an unnecessary Trump production,” said Puck. And then “there are the optics” of an event scheduled days after the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. “Imperfect timing, perhaps,” for officials to be “photographed carousing in elephant hats with the party’s wealthy elite.”
Compounding those optics concerns is the fact that the convention is scheduled for the “same nights as the first two games of the NFL season,” said CNN. Primetime speakers, presumably the GOP’s heaviest-hitting figures, will be forced to compete with the “most-watched sport in the country.”
What next?
The convention is scheduled to last two days, said Texas Republican consultant Brendan Steinhauser to The Hill. “Not two weeks.” The short time frame won’t be “taking away from anything else,” and so long as the event is a “net positive financially” and makes use of the time to “deliver a message,” then “it’s a good thing.”
