Michelle Goldberg was alarmed at the way the audience responded to Chris Christie’s “prosecutorial jeremiad” against Hillary Clinton on Tuesday night. “In the midst of all this ugliness, the baying bloodlust of the audience might seem normal. It is not normal,” Goldberg insists. And Fred Kaplan cataloged the many untruths in Christie’s speech, calling it “an audition for the role of Reverend Parris in a summer-stock production of The Crucible.”
Paul Ryan’s speech cemented his role as the formerly “constructive and sincere” Republican who has completely abandoned his principles to support Trump, William Saletan charges. “Looking back at history, we tend to focus on villains, men like Donald Trump who use hatred to gain power,” Saletan writes. “We forget the importance of cowards. Every Trump needs his Ryan.”
Don’t worry, Republicans, Reihan Salam writes. This has been a bad year, but all is not lost; in our political system, no one party tends to hold sway for long. “It’s pretty simple. Republicans will recover because if Hillary Clinton is elected president, something will go wrong on her watch, and voters will blame her whether she is responsible for that failure or not,” Salam argues. “When this happens, swing voters will turn to the GOP.”
On Thursday, venture capitalist Peter Thiel will speak at the RNC, but Will Oremus cautions us not to get it twisted: Silicon Valley is far from in love with Trump. “Thiel’s support for Trump sets him far apart from the vast majority of his peers,” Oremus writes. “In fact, survey data and anecdotal evidence alike show that Trump is deeply unpopular among technologists—perhaps more so than any major-party presidential candidate in recent memory.”
How sad was Tiffany Trump’s “vague testimonial” about her distant father? Ruth Graham writes about the daughter “named after air and money,” whose speech couldn’t help but reveal how un-present her father has been in her life.
For fun: All the best state roll-call brags from Tuesday night, rated.
The state that has its priorities straight,
Rebecca
