PHILADELPHIA — Ronald Reagan was on the screen warning about the scourge of nuclear war. George H.W. Bush was featured on a video discussing the dangers global warming. A reference to John McCain triggered a standing ovation.
The penultimate day of the Democratic National Convention was mostly about party unity, as Vice President Joe Biden and President Obama made a closing pitch for Hillary Clinton and everyone in the coalition from the Michael Bloomberg center-left to the democratic socialist Bernie Sanders coalesced behind her.
But Wednesday was also the DNC’s Republican night. The last two GOP presidential nominees were favorably invoked from the convention floor. Mitt Romney was featured in a video explaining why he thought the party’s 2016 standard-bearer Donald Trump was unfit for the presidency. Trump’s comments questioning McCain’s status as a war hero were also panned.
“I served in the same Navy as John McCain,” thundered Admiral John Hutson. “I used to vote in the same party as John McCain. Donald, you’re not fit to polish John McCain’s boots!” The Democratic crowd that eight years ago might have booed the Arizona senator roared with approval.
Bloomberg, twelve years removed from appearing at a GOP convention in support of George W. Bush, also tried to speak to his former fellow Republicans. “I’ve been a Democrat, I’ve been a Republican, and I eventually became an independent because I don’t believe either party has a monopoly on good ideas or strong leadership,” he said.
After listing some problems with the Republican Party, Bloomberg told the DNC, “[M]any Democrats wrongly blame the private sector for our problems, and they stand in the way of action on education reform and deficit reduction.”
Throughout the night, Democratic speakers leveled attacks on Trump that could have been lifted from Marco Rubio. They said Trump was too admiring of dictators like Vladimir Putin and Saddam Hussein, they warned he was too eager to abandon our allies, they zinged him for suggesting the military was a “disaster,” they said his vision was too dark and pessimistic for an America that did not need to be made great again because it was already still great.
“American exceptionalism and greatness, shining city on hill, founding documents, etc. — they’re trying to take all our stuff,” tweeted National Review editor Rich Lowry.
Even Obama made his pitch to disgruntled Republicans, arguing that Trump was out of the mainstream for the party’s best traditions. He talked about the Republicans in the Kansas town where he grew up with his grandparents.
“They didn’t respect mean-spiritedness, or folks who were always looking for shortcuts in life,” he said. “Instead, they valued traits like honesty and hard work. Kindness and courtesy. Humility; responsibility; helping each other out. That’s what they believed in. True things. Things that last. The things we try to teach our kids.”
“Look, we Democrats have always had plenty of differences with the Republican Party, and there’s nothing wrong with that; it’s precisely this contest of ideas that pushes our country forward,” Obama declared. “But what we heard in Cleveland last week wasn’t particularly Republican — and it sure wasn’t conservative. What we heard was a deeply pessimistic vision of a country where we turn against each other, and turn away from the rest of the world.”
“Ronald Reagan called America ‘a shining city on a hill,'” Obama remarked. “Donald Trump calls it ‘a divided crime scene’ that only he can fix.”
It won’t be persuasive to the vast majority of Republicans who tuned Obama out a long time ago. But there were anti-Trump conservatives on social media who openly wished a Republican would talk the way the president did Wednesday night who appreciated the speech.
Now on Thursday it will be up to a former Goldwater girl who has since worked against the GOP for decades to convince wavering Republicans that Trump simply is not a normal presidential candidate.
