It’s hard to argue that the first two nights of the Republican convention have been a productive exercise in moving the party into the future.
Between a blistering red-meat speech from unpopular New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a bizarre address from Dr. Ben Carson invoking Lucifer and the partially cribbed speech delivered by Melania Trump, there is sadly little that the GOP has done with its hours of free airtime to expand its appeal or reach new voters.
The one exception so far has been the Tuesday-night speech by Donald Trump, Jr., eldest son of The Donald and one of his father’s proudest advocates. While the Trump campaign’s attempts to reach younger voters or promote forward looking conservatism have been scant, there were hints of what it could look like in the words of Trumps’ 38-year-old son.
If politics is the new Trump family business, Donald Jr.’s remarks positioned him well in that vein, and were infused with a number of elements that may well be a valuable part of the GOP after November, regardless of whether Trump wins the White House.
The “Reformicon” movement — largely a group of writers and think-tankers focused on helping the right advance policies aimed at helping lift the middle class — may have a champion within the Trump ranks in Donald Jr. himself.
Right away, Trump Jr. positioned himself as speaking on behalf of a younger generation. “To my generation, this is the most important election of our lifetime,” he noted, saying “for too long, our country has ignored its problems, punting them down the road for future generations to deal with.”
He also framed his case around the fact that a significant number of Americans (including, according to polls, over 60 percent of Republicans) believe that the next generation will be worse off than their parents.
In line with how so many young voters think about politics and America, his speech opened with frustration but was woven with optimism throughout.
While the millennial generation is quite cynical and disappointed with the status quo, in research I consistently find young Americans are bullish on the potential for the future to ultimately be bright and for challenges that seem impossible to overcome to be successfully surmounted.
Perhaps the most important elements were those where Trump Jr. made the affirmative case for a conservative policy approach using language and arguments too rarely heard.
For many voters, lack of empathy or concern for others is a major reason why they view the GOP unfavorably. Republican policies are easily framed as being about making the rich richer, increasing inequality or resisting America’s increasing diversity.
But take Donald Jr.’s explanation for why we need an improved immigration system. Rather than demonizing those who come to the U.S. illegally, he made the case that it is in fact Hispanic Americans themselves who are among the most negatively impacted by a bad immigration system, penalizing those who “played by the rules” and harming the labor market for other recent immigrants.
This case is far more Reihan Salam than Sheriff Joe, and is a far wiser approach for the GOP over the long term.
Or take Donald Jr.’s remarks about Dodd-Frank and the regulatory state. Easily and often, Republicans are painted as the party favoring eliminating regulations so that capitalism might run amok, favoring profits over people.
But it is rarely that large companies and industries that truly resist regulation. Rather, it is often those companies that lobby to guide the regulatory state to benefit their own interests through more regulation that impede competitors or smaller upstarts.
In his remarks, Donald Jr. addressed the economic anxieties of Americans head on, noting that economic inequality is something we as a party need to acknowledge and address, rather than simply believing that inequality is something to shrug our shoulders at.
And he made the case that it is bloated bureaucracy and crony capitalism — as distinct from a real free market — that drives much of that inequality. Rather than dismissing the real economic anxieties of Americans, these remarks made the case for why they matter and where they come from.
To be sure, Donald Trump’s son is not at the top of the ticket. The nominee himself has not been particularly given to making the moral case for conservative economic or government reforms. Perhaps I’m searching too hard for a glimmer of hope or good news or a sign of a positive future coming out of what is otherwise a fairly dismal convention thus far.
Donald Trump Jr. may or may not be a “reformicon” at heart, but Tuesday night’s speech gave us the first hints that the movement might have an ally within Trump Tower after all.
Kristen Soltis Anderson is a columnist for The Washington Examiner and author of “The Selfie Vote.”
