What Is Apparent Post Convention Is That Republicans Are Winning Over Blacks, Gen Z

From GOP platform changes that liberalize the party’s stance on gay marriage to a convention lineup of Black speakers, a Teamsters president, and social media stars, the Republican Party is making a pitch to young people and minorities once considered out of reach.As calls for President Biden to drop out of the race grow louder by the day and the party is mired in internecine struggles, Democrats are strategizing to stem defections. Talk of an open convention and possibly bypassing Vice President Harris is prompting warnings from Black Democratic leaders. “There would be an uproar,” Democratic National Committee interim chairwoman, Donna Brazille, said. Democrats also once considered the youth vote locked up. Mr. Biden won 18-29 year-olds by more than 20 points in 2020. “If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart,” the adage goes. He has continued to court these voters with student loan relief, climate change policies, and revamping Title IX.Yet calls of “F–k Joe Biden” have become ubiquitous at anti-Israel protests. He’s not winning the far left, and young men across the industrialized world are increasingly moving right.After Mr. Biden’s disastrous debate performance last month, a New York Times/Siena College survey found Trump beating the incumbent president by 8 points among registered Gen Z voters. This is sending shock waves through the Democratic Party.Last week at the Republican National Convention, the movement of young men to the right was evidenced in the crowds. Outside the Fiserv Forum, frat boys in fitted slacks mixed with older Republicans in suits, a newer working-class contingent from the Midwest and South that Trump brought to the party, and Black Americans in “MAGA Black” hats. The Sun heard a lot of this refrain: “This is not your grandpa’s Republican Party.”Republicans are coming out of their Milwaukee convention with the wind at their back. The “party unity” talking point became hackneyed as the week progressed, but it was hard not to feel it on the ground.“A lot of this is President Trump himself making that conscious decision and really helping to push the party to be more welcoming of everyone,” the chairman of the New Hampshire GOP, Chris Ager, tells the Sun.Log Cabin Republicans celebrated the elimination of “traditional marriage” language from the platform. The gay male dating app Grndr reportedly called the Republican National Convention “basically Grndr’s Super Bowl.”The Sun only found a handful of older conservative delegates who said they were upset about the platform changes. Despite declining support among Gen Z for gay marriage and a perceptible rise in homophobia among the online right — likely due to a backlash from transgender issues — none of the young men who spoke with the Sun cared about the party’s platform changes. “This is Trump’s party,” they said. “He’s the nominee.”Hulk Hogan ripped off his shirt on the final night and Kid Rock rapped. Only Fans star Amber Rose, with a tattooed forehead, spoke on the first night about how she once “believed the leftwing propaganda that Donald Trump is a racist,” before doing her own research. A pro-Trump rap video by Forgiato Blow, “Trump Trump Baby,” streamed on the convention floor.“To have Kid Rock and Franklin Graham back to back — I mean, that’s amazing. I never heard of Amber Rose, but apparently she’s got 24 million followers, so not a bad thing,” Mr. Ager says. “It’s a mainstream counterculture. It’s cool to be MAGA now.”Cool is a relative term. At a Turning Point USA party on the penultimate night of the convention, the Sun spoke with several Gen Z men who were in Milwaukee for their first convention. Most said they came to the Republican Party because they either grew up in a Christian conservative household or because they or a close friend suffered through a cancellation attempt for a Halloween costume or a social media post.Their conversion to Republicanism didn’t have the transgressive aura of those who came out of the MAGA closet just five years ago.These young men praised the pick of JD Vance for Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, but most hadn’t heard of Mr. Vance’s mentor, Peter Thiel, or the political philosopher of the New Right, Curtis Yarvin, whose number Mr. Vance reportedly has in his phone.“Did Peter Thiel run for office in California?” a 24-year-old from Texas, Joshua Hendrickson, asked the Sun.This is despite the influence Mr. Thiel — who spoke at Trump’s 2016 convention —likely had in the selection of Mr. Vance and the inclusion of Hulk Hogan in the lineup. One tech celebrity these men did mention was Elon Musk. They praised free speech.Congresswoman, Lauren Boebert, spoke briefly on stage at the Turning Point USA party, as did Charlie Kirk and Jack Posobiec. Ms. Boebert tells the Sun it’s important for the party to attract younger generations. She praised Trump’s VP pick. “I love that he is a younger man full of strength and vigor,” she tells the Sun. Ms. Boebert didn’t seem to know who Mr. Yarvin was either. When asked about Mr. Vance having Mr. Yarvin’s number in his phone, Ms. Boebert replied, “I have Governor Jared Polis’s number in my phone, so yeah, we have to communicate with folks at some level.”When asked about her political influences — citing Mr. Yarvin or Blake Masters and Vivek Ramaswamy sharing a common political nascence in the libertarian works of Rothbard — Ms. Boebert was quick to answer. “That’s easy. That would be Jesus. I’ve read the Bible,” she says.Part of this GOP big tent includes intellectuals, culture warriors, and Bible thumpers — even if they vape and do hanky panky in a theater during a performance of BeetleJuice. Many of this latter group have the largest social media followings. This is Trump’s GOP after all.Trump famously used the line, “What do you have to lose?” when courting the Black vote last cycle. This time he talks about Black unemployment during his term and current housing unaffordability. The first night of the convention featured seven Black speakers.“I believe he’ll get between 34 and 40 percent of the Black vote coming up, and a lot of this is really due to the disenfranchisement that’s come from the Biden administration” chairman of the Harlem Republican Club, Oz Sultan, tells the Sun, perhaps overly optimistic. A picture of a Trump mural on the southside of Chicago went viral this week. After the attempted assassination of Trump, rapper 50 Cent projected a photoshopped cover of his album, “Get Rich or Die Tryin,” at a concert that featured Trump’s face on it.Mr. Sultan donned a MAGA Black hat at the convention. He wasn’t the only one. “You have to remember something. Who got ASAP Rocky out of jail? That was Trump. Who has actually been there and shown up for Black communities? That is Trump,” he says.Another Black convert from the Democrats is Seson Adams, who is running for the New York State assembly from Harlem as a Republican. “I was hearing, ‘If you don’t vote for me you ain’t black,’” he says of Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign fumble. He says illegal immigration, poor schools, and years of Democratic control with no improvements helped drive him to the GOP.“The last time I was in a convention that felt like this was Obama 2008,” Van Jones said on CNN.Trump is coming out of the convention with a growing lead of 5 points in a CBS News/YouGov poll. To put this in perspective, it’s been more than 20 years since a Republican won the national popular vote. Meanwhile Democrats are worried about hemorrhaging Black support, not necessarily because it goes to Trump, but because Black women decide to stay home. “If Kamala is passed over it will be a slap in the face to African Americans and it is likely they will not vote,” a Democratic strategist, Hank Sheinkopf, tells the Sun. Protests planned by the far left for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month and prognostications that this will be another 1968 don’t bode well for the party. Richard Nixon beat the incumbent Vice President Humphrey that year, lest the Democrats forget.

What Is Apparent Post Convention Is That Republicans Are Winning Over Blacks, Gen Z

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