‘We’re not going to take it anymore’: Republicans start their convention with a show of force

Representative Carlos Gimenez of Florida is far from a firebrand. A member of the Republican Governance Group, he joined a handful of mainstream conservatives to block Jim Jordan’s bid to become speaker. In May, after Marjorie Taylor Greene’s failed attempt to boot Speaker Mike Johnson, he said, “You’re not the Republican Party” and called her “an idiot.”

But after a gunman in Butler, Pennsylvania nearly killed former president Donald Trump during a rally, Gimenez told The Independent he was angry, saying that Democrats had sowed the seeds for this by constantly attacking Trump.

“They tried to lawfare and they tried to put him in jail, all these charges that may have been nobody's ever been charged with. It's clearly inherently unfair,” he said. “We’re not going to take it anymore.”

Gimenez in fact sounded a lot like Madison Cawthorn, the disgraced former congressman from North Carolina who has now migrated to Florida. Despite no longer being in Congress, Cawthorn checked into the state GOP’s gathering at the Hyatt in downtown Milwaukee ahead of the Republican National Convention.

Republicans have repeated this sentiment ever since the shooting, with one Republican even saying that President Joe Biden should be charged for the attack on Trump’s life. Indeed, Trump’s newly minted running mate, Senator JD Vance, who he announced on Monday, spent the weekend saying pretty much the same before he was whisked away to Milwaukee.

As the Republican National Convention kicks off in Wisconsin, a must-win state, those The Independent spoke with either said they were angry or made calls for unity.

“There was honestly more anger and frustration that something like that would occur,” Representative Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania, who was at the shooting in Butler, told The Independent. “And definitely when President Trump picked up his fist and let everybody know he was okay and he was going to keep on fighting, that cooled a lot of pandemonium.”

Meuser added that the shooting would motivate Republicans to turn out and vote.

“I think it gives tremendous amount of resolve to people... I think people saw President Trump in his worst state possible, and he showed great moral character, strength of character, leadership,” he told The Independent.

Republicans overwhelmingly nominated Trump on the first day of the convention, with only Washington DC giving its delegates to Nikki Haley. Indeed, even though Haley had won Vermont, it casts its delegate votes for Trump in the end.

Another sign of Trump’s dominance? Glenn Youngkin, whose miracle 2021 victory for the governorship in deep blue Virginia made some in the Beltway media speculate that he would run for the White House as a post-Trump candidate, cast Virginia’s votes for the Trump-Vance ticket.

The image of Trump with blood coming down his face while pumping his fist has now become the bloody shirt that the Republicans will wave throughout the rest of the election cycle. A merchandise stand on the convention campus was already selling prints of that image alongside copies of the Bible.

But there is no guarantee Trump’s shooting will win over people outside the Trump base.

“Most of the people who are going to support Trump have already made up their mind,” one Republican operative told The Independent on background to speak freely. “This will have some boost with those who are on the fence, but I think what people are feeling right now and what right now even within the party from the folks I talked to today is a sense of unity.”

Unity might be the best thing Republicans have going for them right now. Ever since last month, when Joe Biden delivered a disastrous debate performance in Atlanta — in a debate he wanted, no less — Democrats have been turning on each other, fighting about whether to replace Biden at the top of the ticket or slouch into the election with a candidate who has consistently polled below Trump.

In previous elections, people used to say that Democrats fall in love — often picking younger and less-experienced faces — while Republicans fall in line — picking person whose “turn” it is to take up the GOP mantle.

But if anything, the Trump rally and the Democratic fracas shows that Republicans get fired up and Democrats melt down.

That might not be entirely bad for Democrats; melting down could wake them from the deep freeze they put on their party to prevent any dissent against Biden and create a new path for victory. In the same way, getting fired up might ultimately cause some unwanted burns for the GOP.