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Thursday, July 21, 2016
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
OPINION

LARA MOEHLMAN

EDITOR IN CHIEF

JEREMY KAPLAN

EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

BRADLEY WHIPPLE

MANAGING EDITOR

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at 

the University of Michigan since 1890.

Jolly to the grave

JEREMY KAPLAN | OP-ED

MADELINE
NOWICKI

Make America work again?

CLEVELAND — After a Monday 

filled with delegate dissidents 
and 
spousal 
plagiarism, 
the 

Tuesday slogan 
of 
“Make 

America Work 
Again” seemed 
prescient. The 
Republican 
National Convention needed to get 
back on track — it, too, needed to 
work. The theme of the night was 
supposed to be economic issues, 
highlighting 
the 
Republican 

platform for job safety and growth. 
With high-profile speakers such 
as Mitch McConnell and Chris 
Christie, the night held promise 
for at least the acknowledgment of 
concrete policy changes.

Immediately, it became clear 

that this would not be the case. 
McConnell truly did not use 
his position as Senate majority 
leader to advocate for changes to 
entitlement programs or typically 
conservative goals. He used his 
position from behind the podium 
instead to rail against Hillary 
Clinton, 
highlighting 
mainly 

her flip-flopping and her private 
e-mail server scandal. He didn’t 
describe his goals, the party’s 
goals or Trump’s goals for actually 
beating Clinton. Rather, he just 
seemed to care a heck of a lot that 
she didn’t win.

Chris Christie launched what he 

called a “prosecution” of Clinton. 
Listing off Clinton’s record, fact-
checked by the New York Times, 
he incited a gleefully raucous 
electricity into the air, spurning 
chants, dances and squeals from 
Trump-drunk supporters fueled 
by hatred, fear, lack of education 
and the July heat. Attendees 
sitting near me in the stands stood 
up and danced, clenching their 
fists in the air and tossing their 
heads back as if they finally were 
understood. Chris Christie, the 
governor of a state with the third 
highest per-capita income in the 
nation, didn’t discuss policies for 
economic mobility. The governor 
of a state with the second-highest 
concentration of millionaires in 
the nation didn’t mention his plans 
for making more of the country 
into 
millionaires, 
much 
less 

his plans to reduce regulations 
for businesses and millionaires 
alike. He didn’t outline anything 
concrete. Christie basked in his 
own spectacle, failing to shed 
light on the policies of the man 
under whose shadow he will 
permanently reside.

Trump’s 
daughter, 
Tiffany, 

focused on her father’s leadership 
qualities as a businessman, rather 
than any actual substance of how 
he could translate them into a 
quality economy. Donald Trump Jr. 
talked about how his dad ensured 
he knew how to lay drywall and 
carry a hammer and be a real salt-
of-the-earth construction worker. 
He said this while dressed in a 
shirt with a literal blue collar and 
failed to provide insight into how 
his father would share the great 
secrets of construction with the 
rest of America. General manager 
of Trump Winery, Kerry Woolard, 
mentioned Trump’s ability to 
work under pressure, without 
delving into any specifics on 
Trump’s or any other plan to ease 
the pressure of the working class 
in America. Sen. Shelley Moore 
Capito of West Virginia talked at 
length about how Clinton dislikes 
the mining industry and how this 
will ruin the economy of Capito’s 
state but failed to point out what 
Trump 
would 
specifically 
do 

differently.

Making America work again 

could have been a catchy twist on 
Trump’s slogan-filled dilettante 
of a campaign, if not for two key 
flaws. First, America was put 
back to work already. President 
Obama did exactly that, which is 
why the country now experiences 
only a 5.5 percent unemployment 
rate 
as 
opposed 
to 
nearly 

double that during the Great 
Recession. America is at work 
and is continuing to do so with 
job growth continuing steadily 
as it has over the past several 
years of Obama’s administration. 
Second, the Republicans failed to 
coalesce around any real strategy 
for putting Americans to work. 
Apart from blue-collar pandering 
from 
millionaires, 
platitudes 

about leadership qualities and 
demonizing of the opposition, the 
Republicans failed to coalesce 
around any economic issue at 
all. The only strand of unity 
that ran consistent throughout 
the night was a distaste for 
Secretary Clinton. I’m not sure 
how disliking an opponent is a 
legitimate party platform, much 
less one that will put America to 
work. If increasing American jobs 
was as simple as increasing hatred 
for public figures, unemployment 
would have been extinct long ago.

—Madeline Nowicki can be 

reached at nowickim@umich.edu.

There are a lot of reasons to 

be terrified of Donald Trump 
and the movement his campaign 
created. He has called for the 
flat-out ban of an entire religious 
group from the country, has said 
he would punch protesters at his 
rallies and his vocabulary seems 
to lack the words for an apology. 
But on display in Cleveland at the 
Republican National Convention 
this week was a new terror: 
the seemingly-gleeful attitude 
that 
the 
now-mainstream 

Republican Party has taken to 
their new nominee, and the lack 
of awareness that the GOP has 
departed from standard rational 
discourse.

Presidential 
conventions 

are supposed to be unifying 
moments for their parties. After 
a long-fought battle, the party 
can finally come together and 
agree to support one candidate 
for the presidential election. In 
the standard game of politics, 
the logic follows that the party 
should support the will of the 
general populace of the party. 
But 
2016 
has 
thrown 
that 

standard rule book out the 
window. 
Wednesday, 
Trump 

advisor Al Baldasaro suggested 
that opponent Hillary Clinton 
should be executed by firing 
squad (Trump’s spokesman said 
Trump disagreed, but thanked 
Baldasaro for his support).

Yet 
Trump’s 
seeming 

ignorance 
of 
the 
standard 

ways of being a candidate 
is what’s gaining him more 
attraction. 
The 
party 
that 

endlessly 
touted 
being 
the 

party of Lincoln now seems 
bent on ripping establishment 
practices to shreds in favor 
of 
loud-mouthed 
rhetoric. 

This departure from norms 
has been riling up convention 
attendees speech after speech, 
as speakers adopted Trump’s 
rhetoric and lack of affection 
for 
facts 
in 
attempting 
to 

prosecute Clinton on stage and 
suggesting that she associates 
with Lucifer.

Many 
republicans 
skipped 

the 
convention 
altogether. 

Republican primary candidates 
including Marco Rubio and 
John Kasich, former presidents 
George W. Bush and George 
H.W. Bush, Gov. Rick Snyder 
and scores of other Republican 

leaders all did not attend the 
convention either under protest 
or with a variety of other 
excuses. Taking their place 
as primetime representatives 
of the GOP, however, was an 
arena filled with supporters 
more than willing to scream 
their support for all that Trump 
stands for.

While I may not share many 

beliefs with the Republican 
Party, this development still 
brings me great disappointment. 
Part of America’s greatness has 
involved the ability for two 
parties to engage in serious 
debates over the issues. That 
America is not being made 
great again in GOP’s decision 
to follow Trump over the ledge 
in verbally supporting racist 
remarks, dubious conspiracy 
theories and violent events. 
While the Republican Party 
may appear to be jolly in 
support for their nominee this 
week, this week demonstrates 
that the GOP is no longer the 
institution it once was.

—Jeremy Kaplan is the 

Summer Editorial Page Editor.

Roland Davidson, Caitlin Heenan, Elena Hubbell, Jeremy 
Kaplan, Madeline Nowicki, Kevin Sweitzer, Brooke White.

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