Some of the party’s more traditional members and wealthier donors were dismayed by the choice of J.D. Vance as vice president, given his more populist views. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) lobbied against Vance but later posted a photo praising his choice.
To find public dissent at the Republican National Convention, one had to look away from Milwaukee—where the convention reflected, in almost every way, a new Republican Party and a candidate who had solidified his support and almost completely neutralized his critics.
“I’ve been to six conventions and I’ve never seen such a consensus. You’re either MAGA or you’re not. Where are the anti-MAGAs? You’re either MAGA or you understand the problem,” the Republican said. donor Dan Eberhart as he surveyed the convention scene Wednesday afternoon.
Eberhart was right. As the four-day MAGA festival wrapped up Thursday night, Trump’s detractors were mostly conspicuously absent: They stayed home or quietly wandered around the events outside the convention hall, lamenting what their party once was. Some former Trump foes with more traditional GOP views, like former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, came to the convention and took a knee in support of Trump.
The party’s surviving former candidates did not attend the event. Neither did former House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who represented Wisconsin. Former House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio showed up only briefly, where he was seen at a warehouse party. The Bush family — neither the former president nor the former Florida governor — was in attendance. Many former Trump advisers and Cabinet members were not in attendance. Ronna McDaniel, the party’s longtime chairwoman, was also not in attendance. Former Vice President Mike Pence posted photos of himself online in the Montana woods.
““I certainly didn’t intend to come and celebrate Donald Trump, that’s for sure,” said John Bolton, a former Trump national security adviser who said he attended eight conventions, including when he was a White House intern for Vice President Spiro Agnew. “I think I’m in good company, because there are a lot of us.”
Republicans in exile are virulently opposed to the current version of the Republican Party, both personally and politically, they say. Trump has departed radically from traditional Republican orthodoxy, taking a more isolationist approach to the world and supporting tariffs. But many say their real opposition to the former president is his character — his false claims that the election was stolen, his role in inciting the Jan. 6 mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol, his felony convictions, the opportunists he surrounds himself with and the way he has elevated fringe figures and conspiracy theorists to the status quo. They also abhor the way he speaks about his critics.
Some who worked for Trump or were formerly prominent Republicans came to the convention, but only to appear on the news as critics. Marc Short and Michael Steele, Pence’s former chief of staff and former head of the Republican National Committee, respectively, were there, but only to appear on television.
Short mixed inside the Republicans partied in the convention hall, joking about what the new vice president might have in store. Short said he was dismayed to hear speeches blaming NATO for Vladimir Putin’s invasion, supporting tariffs, a union leader criticizing businesses and Republicans “walking away from traditional life and marriage and stopping defending Taiwan.”
“None of this is conservative in any way,” he said.
As Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump communications aide turned critic, sat on the CNN set, she said what Trump had accomplished was impressive — even if she didn’t like much of it.
“The Republican Party has completely changed, from traditional conservatism to MAGAism. The Republican Party is unquestionably the party of Trump, with converts (Haley, Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina), a new guard of rising stars (Vance, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders), and major shifts in longstanding Republican politics. Trump is arguably the strongest party politically since it rode the escalator in 2015,” she said.
Mike DuHaime, a prominent Republican consultant who skipped the convention and is opposed to Trump, acknowledged that the former president has been effective. He has worked for former Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and a number of other Republicans, all of whom Trump attacked or lost to.
“He’s making a mark on the party that he didn’t make in 2020 or 2016,” DuHaime said. “I think he’s transforming the politics of the party for the long term. Some of that is going to last after Trump, whether he wins or loses. It’s less about Trumpism and more about what the party will stand for.”
Peripheral efforts have been made to remind Milwaukeeans that not everyone in the GOP is a Trump supporter.
Kyle Sweetser, a building contractor in Mobile, Alabama, who identifies as a Reagan Republican, said he began paying closer attention to Trump’s policies in 2022 and realized he was not a traditional conservative when it came to foreign and economic policy. Sweetser said he has seen in his own business how Trump’s tariffs have led to higher prices and unavailability of some products such as roll-up garage doors.
“I would like to try to convince people that Trump is not a Republican. He’s not a Republican at all. He’s a MAGA populist,” said Sweetser, who appears in ads for the super PAC Republican Voters Against Trump. “I don’t even know what you would call his foreign policy, but I would call it to the left of Joe Biden’s. His trade policy is something that Bernie Sanders would have supported. A tenet of conservatism is free trade. He’s against that. He’s against free trade.”
Steve Clark, another anti-Trump Republican who appears in digital ads and billboards, said he voted for Pence over Trump in 2016. But he earned his vote in 2020 because of his work as president. Clark later said his views changed with Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat in that election.
“What really cracked me up was the way the MAGA movement bought into this,” he said. “So it’s not just Trump, it’s Trump and the MAGA movement.” He added: “I can’t support Trump and I won’t tolerate that. I’m sick of Biden, I’m sick of all this. … Let’s go back to the Reagan Republican style. We can’t bury our heads in the sand. The MAGA conservatives, the Republican Party has abandoned me.”
Trump’s New Party Was Exposed This week, inside the Trade Hotel, pro-Trump lawmakers, media figures like Tucker Carlson, Trump aides, lawyers and friends, family members and others gathered at a bar. Some mocked the critics who worked against Vance’s vice presidential aspirations, while others plotted about a second term and the jobs they might get.
Trump allies said they were not worried about the party’s old guard, which they said had let in too many immigrants, started too many wars and done not enough to fight for working people.
GOP Chairman Michael Whatley said he was pleased to lead a new kind of Republican Party under Trump. A longtime Republican official and former lobbyist, Whatley acknowledged The GOP has changed significantly under Trump, but he said it’s for the better.
“We are a blue-collar party. You saw it here at the convention. You saw it throughout President Trump’s campaign. The Democratic Party has always been that way, but they’ve abandoned that idea,” Whatley said. “What we’re seeing in the Republican Party is a unity that I haven’t seen in generations.”
Republicans here focused on people who had never attended a convention before, particularly black men whom they are looking to win the election.
Gerald Maze, a black man, said he was a Democrat until Trump ran. “My whole family in Louisiana is Democrat,” he said.
Maze said he was inspired by Trump’s observation because he wanted to get rid of “nonsense” and make the country rich again. He said he was less concerned about traditional GOP policy positions, but he did care about border security.
Maze said he would not have been inclined to vote for another Republican, such as McCain or Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah).
He has now said he has more friends who are interested in Trump.
“It’s a wave,” he said.
Jack Blakely, a Republican activist from Virginia, saw Vance’s choice as the cornerstone of a transformation he had been waiting for since he entered Republican politics at age 19.
The old three-legged stool of Reagan conservatism was national defense, social conservatives and economic issues, he said.
“This is the first time since I’ve been involved that the new Republican Party has taken shape,” said Blakely, 37, a Hanover County resident and state party board member, as he returned to his hotel by bus late Wednesday night after Vance’s speech. “And that’s what we saw, that’s what we saw tonight.”
Blakely added that some are trying to convince themselves that the GOP is going to go back to what it once was, “those who think that what’s happening is some kind of fad or some kind of fever that’s going to die down.”
“That’s not the case. This is a brand new party, and it’s never been more united,” he said.
