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In one of the funniest moments from the first night of the Republican National Convention, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott claimed that former President Donald Trump survived Saturday’s assassination attempt. It’s a miracle.
“Our God is still saving us, still delivering us. Because the devil came to Pennsylvania with a rifle, but the American lion stood up again,” Scott said, roaring into the microphone after his sermon. The crowd roared with him.
You could hear the crowd’s enthusiasm rise as Scott spoke — and you could hear it basically every time Trump or his assassination was mentioned. But generally speaking, the programming on the main topic of the night, economic policy, was also the weakest.
Although various speakers complained about inflation, no one actually knew what to do about it. The closest thing to a policy slogan was “no tax on tips,” but More slogan than actual policy.The most stirring speech of the night came from Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, who didn’t really endorse Trump or the Republican platform — and Create divisions among the audience.
In short, Monday night’s events showed mostly that the Republican Party remains too focused on the deification of Donald Trump — and largely uninterested in the policy moves he might make. But does that mean the 2024 Republican Party is all for nothing?
The Republican Party is in the midst of a Trumpian transformation, struggling to blend its old identity of tax cuts and deregulation with populist attitudes on issues like trade. Blending that into a coherent whole is difficult, especially at a big public event.
But the Republicans do have some ideas. If you read two key documents side by side — RNC Platform and the Heritage Foundation 2025 Project —You can begin to glimpse the outlines of a second Trump term.
Where does Trump get his ideas?
The manifesto of a political party convention is equivalent to a promise to voters, while politicians actually Indeed, they tend to fulfill their policy commitments (Or at least try to). A 2018 paperPolitical scientist E.J. Fagan has found that issues in a president’s platform are highly likely to generate legislation and committee hearings (at least when the winning presidential candidate’s party also controls Congress).
That’s why the written Republican platform is so important — it gives us a sense of what the next four years will look like under Trump.
In some ways, the document is ridiculous. It is only 16 pages long. The average length of a history is 50 to 75 pageswhich is filled with odd capitalization choices that seem intended to mimic Donald Trump’s social media posting style. And many of its so-called policies are as vague as the shows on stage.
On foreign policy, for example, the platform declares that “the Republican Party will strengthen the economic, military, and diplomatic capacity to protect the American way of life from the malign influence of nations around the world that oppose us.”
But at the same time, the direction of the document is very clear: It tells you the grand aspirations that the Republicans would actually try to achieve if they were in power.
On immigration, the bill calls for the “largest deportation program in American history.” On trade, it proposes sweeping tariffs on all foreign-made goods. On democracy, it calls for punishing “those who abuse the power of government to unfairly prosecute political opponents” — an almost naked threat to launch criminal investigations into President Joe Biden and the prosecutors who prosecuted Donald Trump.
In short, the platform endorses Trumpism: it transforms the cornerstones of Trump’s public rhetoric into officially sanctioned Republican policy. Free markets and individual liberties are excluded;National Conservatism” exist.
Of course, the document is thin on the ground, so it’s not always clear how to translate that vision into action. That’s where outside forces step in — most notably the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” blueprint for a second Republican term.
The now-infamous document added substance to the platform: It detailed a series of recommendations for how to translate the RNC’s vague Trumpist principles into actual, concrete policies. In essence, it served as a policy shop for a party that had shown little interest in doing its homework.
MSNBC host Chris Hayes said: “A big reason why ‘Project 2025’ is so striking is that the Trump campaign actually has almost no policy tools, and the ‘platform’ is just a patchwork of Trump’s truthful social posts.” On Twitter/X wrote.
In fact, the connection between the two Fairly direct.
Russ Waters Influential Writers The 2025 Project chapter on executive staffing also Served as Policy Director Member of the 2024 Platform Drafting Committee. The Heritage Foundation, which published the 2025 project, is Major sponsor of the Republican National Committee’s gala — With a banner Hanging in the foyer.
So while it was hard to discern the agenda from the Republican National Convention itself, there was a deep and well-developed policy plan behind the scenes. It was more fleshed out than anything Trump brought to the Oval Office in 2016, and this time, there was a team ready to implement it.
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