Milwaukee hits different

“These are my people, this is where I belong.”

Judging by the muted reaction when Amber Rose was introduced on Monday night, few in the hall of the Republican National Convention even knew who she was. It didn’t matter. Striding onto the stage with close-cropped, bleached blonde hair and prominent face tattoos, her mere presence at the convention sent a clear message.

While her life experience was euphemized on-screen as “Mother and Entrepreneur,” Rose’s biography speaks for itself: A biracial model, rapper, and socialite, she commands 23 million Instagram followers after parlaying tabloid fame and relationships with artists like Kanye West into a business and influencer career. A former stripper, she posed nude on the cover of her 2015 book “How to Be a Bad Bitch,” which was published the same year she founded the feminist, sex-positive Los Angeles Slutwalk.

Much of the immediate discussion of Rose’s speech focused on the Trump campaign’s broader effort to make inroads with Black voters; on CNN, Van Jones called it “the most dangerous” address of the night for Democrats. But it underscored something bigger: Throughout the first days of Republicans’ gathering in Milwaukee, a quiet revolution was underway. A brasher, flashier, and yes, more diverse, party identity seemed to be reaching full maturation, gleefully embracing the same message Democrats have hurled as an insult: It’s not your dad’s GOP.

“President Trump has changed the Republican Party,” Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, told me Monday. Inside the Fiserv Forum, the point is hard to dispute. The remnants of the old GOP — the seersucker, the boat shoes, the summer intern khakis — are still here. But now, too, are Swarovski-spangled hoop gowns and expletive-laden cowboy hats. Delegates still applaud calls to curtail government involvement in the economy, but many now wear hard hats and wave signs calling for “higher wages.” The screen still features invocations of Christian morality, but now it also broadcasts a rap parody of “Ice, Ice, Baby” that includes repeated mentions of “FJB.”

The stage has been studded with figures whose mere presence would have been unthinkable at a Republican convention a decade ago. Monday’s longest speaking time went not to rising stars like Sen. Tim Scott or Gov. Kristi Noem but to Teamsters President Sean O’Brien. The union leader, who has sought speaking roles at both conventions and has not endorsed either candidate, garnered some of the biggest cheers of the night as he straightforwardly denounced decades of conservative economic orthodoxy.

Before addresses from Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis on Tuesday came reality star Savannah Chrisley, who used her perch to denounce her parents' fraud and tax evasion convictions. Wednesday’s programming is set to relegate luminaries like Newt Gingrich and Greg Abbott to early speaking slots — while elevating a group of UNC frat boys to primetime. And UFC president Dana White, who publicly identifies as an atheist, was slated to introduce Trump on Thursday.

Even traditional speakers’ rhetoric underscored the shift. Rep. Byron Donalds mocked the fact that “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris sent their kids to high priced private schools.” The next night, Sen. Eric Smitt touted the GOP as the “party of working families.” Offstage at an Axios event, Sen. Steve Daines, the Senate Republicans’ campaign chief, repeatedly spoke of the Trump-Vance ticket’s potential appeal to “lunchbucket Democrats.”

The policy aspect of the party’s evolution remains a major question mark. With the exception of his position on trade, Trump’s first-term economic policy deviated little from traditional supply-side conservatism; his second-term agenda continues to promise deregulation and large tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

But the change in the party’s culture is unmistakable. American Conservative Union chair Matt Schlapp favorably compared Milaukee to the 2012 Tampa confab that nominated Mitt Romney. That convention “was about rich businessmen,” Schlapp told me, adding that “Trump always got” that Republican voters wanted something else.

Whether all this translates into the racial breakthrough many in the GOP want is still unclear.  Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who aggressively recruited non-white candidates during his time atop the GOP conference, told me he expects that the convention would aid efforts to reach voters of color, with whom he predicted the ticket would do “much better.”

But amid the broader class realignment of American politics — in 2020, Biden became the first Democratic nominee since the genesis of exit polling to win the wealthiest slice of Americans — the convention could be remembered as a watershed moment, sending a clear message to some traditional Democratic voters: These are your people and this is where you belong. 

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