Pollak: The RNC Rebranded the Republican Party, and America

The great success of the Republican National Convention (RNC) is that it rebranded the Republican Party.

Over four nights, we saw speaker after speaker telling the stories of African Americans, of immigrants, of women — and of how President Trump had fought for them all.

The convention explained conservative policies, but did so through personal testimonials — the grief of Ann Dorn and Kayla Mueller’s parents; the warnings of Maximo Alvarez; a young Madison Cawthorn rising to his feet.

There has been much hand-wringing in the media about how Trump has changed the GOP. For four days, Republicans celebrated civil rights leaders, suffragettes, and redeemed prisoners. If this is Trump’s “new” GOP, it is long overdue.

The feeling of a typical Republican voter, watching all of this, was one of pride — pride in the party, pride in the president, pride in the country.

For once, the Republican Party did not portray itself as part of a counterculture, pushing back against dominant liberal themes. Instead, the RNC took the best of those themes — diversity, tolerance, compassion — and told the Republican story in those terms.

Before the RNC, there was much talk about “shy” Trump voters. Fewer will be shy now.

But the RNC did more than simply present the case for one side of the political argument. It also told Americans a story about themselves — a story about a strong country, a country with much to celebrate, even during what Joe Biden and the Democrats called a “season of darkness.”

The fireworks display at the Washington Monument, and the opera at the White House, were audacious — and joyous. Democrats groused about the Hatch Act as the country sang along to patriotic songs.

America has not felt this way since the 1980s, since Ronald Reagan rescued the country from Jimmy Carter’s “malaise.”

Trump and the Republicans didn’t just appeal to an existing sense of patriotism; they helped us discover it again.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.