A Raised Fist and a Lower Tone

Binyamin Rose’s takes on an energized GOP

Speaker after speaker at the Republican National Convention called the November 2024 presidential election the most important of our lifetime. They described in stark terms how the future of the United States of America is on the line. You will hear the same from the Democrats in Chicago in August. Voters may fret over polarization and insist our leaders find a way to overcome it, but the election is a contest between two competing value systems sharing little common ground. The race is turning into a winner-take-all battle in which one side will come out on top and the other will turn into a seething mass of discontent.

Donald Trump came within an inch of missing his date with history to accept the Republican presidential nomination for a third time, after an assassin’s bullet pierced his ear, but nothing more vital.

When Trump told followers that his near-death experience led him to rip up his already-prepared “humdinger” of an acceptance speech and mellow it with calls for unity, speculation began that Trump was embarking on a rebrand for the upcoming general election campaign.

What Trump gave us was something in between.

His acceptance speech contained elements of a man who had a brush with death, forced to come to grips with his mortality; but once he got cranked, he spiced his address with a large helping of the vintage Trump.