Republican Convention: Live Coverage Of The Final Night

Donald Trump was already channeling Nixon’s “silent majority” line. Now he’s adding “law and order” — which he’s used three times so far — to the repertoire.

There has been a lot about crime in Trump’s speech, which is curious to me. Maybe the Trump campaign has polling on this, but just 3 percent of Americans think crime is the most important problem facing this country in the most recent Gallup poll. That’s far lower than a host of other issues, such as the economy, unemployment, the federal debt, immigration and racism.

As long as the economy is OK, Micah, I disagree. People are Republicans because they are conservative on social and economic issues. Evidently the race-immigration strain was stronger in the party than we thought, as I alluded to earlier. But Trump’s victory wasn’t a unifying one, and his stances aren’t conventional Republican ones. The main thing campaigns do is show people which candidates line up with their stances. This rhetoric just tells many Republican voters that Trump isn’t quite in line with their views.