Dear Friends,

To be honest, there was no way I could stomach a full week of the Republican convention. So with the exception of catching a few minutes here and there (was Melania in the Rose Garden or a Trump hotel?), I generally took a pass. Luckily, my colleagues here at The New Republic kept me filled in.

Before it even started, Libby Watson set the stage by reminding us that “in a sensible world, the big question should be: How can these party leaders even show their faces? How can the party that has presided over such a disaster with nearly 200,000 dead, and in full refusal to extend the vital financial lifelines needed to keep people home and safe, get up on stage and triumphantly declare that Everything Is Great?”

The GOP decided it didn’t need a new party platform. Why? Alex Shephard answered that question: “It isn’t just that the party has surrendered to Trump. It’s also because its policies are deeply unpopular.… By not writing a platform, Republicans can punt on the question of what, if anything, the GOP stands for until 2024.”

Melissa Gira Grant covered the “real, paranoid housewives” of the convention: “In the Trump era, these women represent the late stage of the archetype Victorians knew as the angel in the house. Don’t call her a simple housewife; she carried the power and responsibility to soothe the world of men from the comforts and privileges offered in the private sphere.” One example she gave was Kimberly Guilfoyle, Trump Jr.’s girlfriend, who spelled out in high-octane lies the theme of the week: “They want to enslave you”—“they” being the Democrats, Black Lives Matter, socialists, the media, teachers unions, and the many forces conspiring to destroy all that the angels represent and are fighting to protect. “Don’t let them kill future generations.”

But there was more to it than that, as Alex Shephard observed: “On the one hand, viewers have been told the country has never been stronger, greater, or more prosperous, all thanks to the focused and empathetic leadership of President Trump. On the other hand, the country is so fragile that it will immediately collapse into full-on anarchy if Joe Biden gets elected in November.”

Walter Shapiro thought “the only surprise is how lost the Trump team seems to be as it struggles to divert attention from a pandemic and an economic collapse.” He pointed to Mike Pence, who “praised his Dear Leader’s reign, while also insisting that America needed to be saved yet again.”

I think I made the right decision by avoiding the convention and following it at TNR.com. Shapiro summed it up: “If the Republican convention were a TV series, it would be canceled mid-season.”

With the presidential election season upon us, now’s the time to join Melissa Gira Grant, Libby Watson, Walter Shapiro, Alex Shepard, and the best investigative reporters, opinion writers, and cultural critics in America.

Subscribe to The New Republic today.

Sincerely,

Kerrie Gillis, publisher

• Melissa Gira Grant’s The Real, Paranoid Housewives of the Republican Convention
• Libby Watson’s Republican Voters Embrace Trump’s Cult of Destruction
• Walter Shapiro’s Mike Pence Is a Parody of a Politician
• Walter Shapiro’s The Surprising Boredom of Trump’s Circus Show
• Alex Shephard’s The Republican National Convention’s War on Reality
• Alex Shephard’s Why the GOP Didn’t Write a New Platform