With diverse lineup, Trump convention channels GOP’s 1980s ‘big tent’ aspirations

With a diverse speaker lineup, President Trump's 2020 GOP convention is channeling the 1980s-vintage "big tent" Republican party that helped Ronald Reagan thrash Walter Mondale in a 49-state win and carry George H.W. Bush to victory in 1988.

While this week's GOP speakers include a long list of racial minorities, women, young people and the first openly gay person to serve in a U.S. cabinet-level position, the question is whether this polished, made-for-TV lineup will convince a rapidly diversifying nation to vote Republican in 2020.

Lee Atwater, Bush's 1988 campaign manager, popularized the phrase "big tent" after he was asked what the November 1989 gubernatorial election meant for Republicans. "Our party is a big tent," Atwater said. "We can house many views on many issues."

Antonio Benedi, a trusted former Bush aide who worked closely with Atwater, told Just the News that Trump's 2020 approach reverberates with echoes from conventions past. 

"On the 'big tent,' what they're talking about isn't new," Benedi said. "The variety, to be honest, isn't new. Reagan had kind of a big mix, too. So did [George W. Bush] at his conventions. So it's just highlighted more now because it's now. And everybody talks about how different it is now from past years, but if you look back, it's not that much different. There might be slight differences in the approach or the messaging, but as far as the inclusion to get the big tent to hold more people, that's been going on for a long time."

Benedi noted that as a Republican leader, Bush had previously led on racial issues, naming African-American Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court and signing into law the "Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Holiday Commission Extension Act."

Flash forward to 2020, when choice Republican convention speaking slots have been filled by prominent African-American leaders ranging from Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) to former NFL player Jack Brewer, civil rights legend Clarence Henderson, and Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron.

As reported by Just the News, UCLA data collected just prior to the protests about the death of African-American George Floyd show younger black Americans have been holding more favorable views of President Trump than their parents and grandparents. A recent CNN poll showing a 10-point gain for Trump appears driven by people of color in swing states. The CNN polling found 26% of "people of color" approved of Trump in June, compared to 37% in August.

For Benedi, the son of Cuban immigrants who fled the Castro regime with his parents when Benedi was five years old, what differentiates 2020 from the presidential campaigns of the Reagan-Bush era GOP isn't minority outreach but, rather, the deepening ideological divide in American politics.

"This election is about more than the Democrats and the Republicans getting into office, it's about the American socialists getting into office," Benedi said. "Because socialism, communism, AOC, Bernie Sanders having a honeymoon in Moscow, we didn't have that then."