Republicans always seem to come home. Some sooner than others.
Vivek Ramaswamy never really ran against him. Ron DeSantis threw his weight behind him within an hour of dropping out of the primary. But Nikki Haley, the last woman standing, she took her time. The endorsement took three full months to arrive. Donald Trump didn’t mind.
The former president did not need her support to lock down a third consecutive nomination. He may not need it to return to the White House either. But as Haley walked onstage at the Republican National Convention Tuesday, Trump beamed. He listened with a bandaged ear from a box overlooking the arena to his last rival, the member of his cabinet who went astray, bending the knee in prime time.
“If there is one thing Donald Trump loves more than a Day One supporter,” Hogan Gidley, who served as a Trump White House aide, told RealClearPolitics, “it is a convert.”
Yet, if there is one thing Trump has notably not done this week, it is gloat. He has said comparatively little since the attempt on his life Saturday, exuding a gracious silence – perhaps even a magnanimous stoicism. A source who spoke with the former president at length the day after he dodged an assassin’s bullet reported talking to “a different Donald Trump, but in the best way possible.”
Granted anonymity to speak freely, this individual, who has worked closely with Trump for nearly a decade, described a “weirdly counterintuitive” phenomenon whereby “he almost dies, he miraculously survives, and it becomes even less about him.”
Perhaps that explains the last-minute invitation to Nikki Haley. She was not originally slated to speak at the RNC, but after the assassination attempt, the Trump campaign asked her to come speak. It was simultaneously an attempt at party and national unity, an overture made more remarkable considering the sheer bitterness of their rivalry. Remember the birdcage? Trump had one delivered to her hotel room the day after dubbing her “Birdbrain.” It only got worse from that moment on. Haley had been the rare member of the Trump administration to leave the White House on good terms with the former president – and with her reputation intact. Her decision to challenge him was, therefore, seen by Trump and his loyalists as nothing short of a betrayal. And Trump held nothing back.
He ridiculed her looks, suggested that there was something awry in her marriage, and dispatched his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., to repeatedly call her “a warmonger.” Haley countered by calling him “unhinged,” calling for cognitive tests for all candidates while suggesting he had lost a step, and characterized a third Trump nomination as “suicide for our country.”
But all now seems forgiven, or at least forgotten. At this convention, things just feel altered, said Republican pollster Frank Luntz. “And it feels different, which means people are hearing something different,” he told RCP. “That hasn’t happened for years.” What changed among the Republican faithful? “Their hero was almost taken away from them,” he replied, an occurrence that “humanized Trump and humbled his supporters.”
The prize for good behavior may very well be a landslide, the famous pollster continued. “If Trump can get through a day without attacking her, that’s the secret ingredient for the rest of this campaign,” he said. “Add Haley voters to Trump’s total, and he is unbeatable.”
Haley did her part. “I’ll start by making one thing perfectly clear: Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period,” she told the delegates, some of whom had booed her at the beginning but were cheering by the end.
“There are some Americans who don’t agree with Donald Trump 100% of the time,” she continued. “My message to them is simple: You don’t have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him.”
Trump has made plenty of bitter rivals into friends during his time in office. Just think of the nicknames. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who challenged him eight years ago, went from “Lying Ted” in that time to “Beautiful Ted.” Consider also the props. He had a pallet of Trump bottled water, complete with his face emblazoned on the packaging, delivered to the campaign headquarters of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio in 2016. It was a reference to Rubio’s bottled-water moment when he awkwardly paused his response to President Obama’s State of the Union to take a drink. Ultimately, the barb did not matter. Rubio became a key legislative ally of Trump, even auditioning this time around to be his running mate.
“Kamala Harris called Joe Biden a sex criminal and a segregationist from the debate stage,” Gidley said of the current team of rivals in the White House. “Let’s not pretend like these things aren’t bloody and brutal up until the moment of the nomination. That's how it works.”
But Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene remembers. So do plenty of the former president’s allies. “You’re seeing massive unity here at the conference, and that’s to win in November,” the Georgia Republican told RCP. “Does that change the fact that there’s no more opportunism? No way.”
When her colleagues on Capitol Hill suddenly rushed to endorse Trump after it was clear he would win the primary, Greene, perhaps the most loyal MAGA lieutenant in Congress, told RCP in March that she found the whole ordeal understandable but “pathetic.”
Fast forward three months and the Georgia firebrand reports that “you can see the different characters, the usual ones, who are here for their own careers. That will always continue,” she said, resigning herself to that reality before adding, “but I am glad for the unity.” Indeed, the GOP is basking in it.
DeSantis turned the page on his rivalry with Trump and focused his ire on Biden. “Our enemies do not contain their designs to between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.,” he said, referencing reports about the abbreviated hours the president keeps. “We need a commander in chief who can lead 24 hours a day and seven days a week. America cannot afford four more years of a ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ presidency.”
“Let’s make the 45th president of the United States the 47th president of the United States,” he said to conclude his remarks as a broad smile came across Trump’s face. “Let’s elect Republicans up and down the ballot, and let’s heed the call of our party’s nominee to fight, fight, fight for these United States.”
Republicans feel a different moment. Yes, it was brought on by tragic circumstances that none of them would like to repeat. All the same, the failed assassination attempt has ushered in a feeling of resilience, strength, and unity. “Democrats nearly always land on their feet. They’re faster footed. They figure out how to make lemonade out of lemons,” Indiana Sen. Mike Braun told RCP. “I think this is our chance.”
Added Gidley, “I’m still shocked by the fact that a shoe hasn’t dropped yet. A positive news cycle this long just doesn’t happen ever, much less to us.”
And so, for now, Republicans are enjoying their homecoming.
