Louis Capozzi | 5 big takeaways from Cleveland

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After a dramatic and exciting week, the Republican National Convention is over. It’s hard to name a convention in recent American history more dramatic than this one, as the Republican Party worked in real time to unite, even as Senator Ted Cruz made it clear that division still exists.

Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, it was a big week for Penn alumni. Donald Trump became the first Penn alumni to become a major party’s presidential nominee since William Henry Harrison in 1839. Three other Penn alumni, Tiffany, Donald Jr., and Ivanka Trump also rocked Cleveland and all received positive media reviews.

This week may also prove impactful in shaping the future of the Republican Party, as Donald Trump is pulling the Party in new directions on immigration, LGBTQ rights, and foreign policy.

While I’ve written about all these topics on Twitter and on my DP blog, here are what I see as the five biggest takeaways from this week’s #RNCinCLE.

1. Trump shifts on immigration: The biggest shift for Trump at the RNC may have been on immigration. While the border wall with Mexico is still at the center of his platform, there was no discussion of Mexico paying for it. More importantly, there was no discussion of mass deportations of illegal immigrants. During my interview with Congressman Lou Barletta, a top Trump surrogate and immigration advisor, the discussion focused on deporting only illegal immigrants who have committed a crime. When I pressed Rep. Barletta on whether Trump planned to deport illegal immigrants more broadly, like Dreamers, he referred to Trump’s negotiation tactics in The Art of the Deal. As Barletta explained, these tactics involve getting more of what you want by taking a radical starting position that makes people uncomfortable before settling on a position that’s palatable to both sides. To me, it was a clear signal that Donald Trump is not prepared to follow through on his earlier commitment to mass deportations.

If Trump does win in 2016, that could be welcome news.

2. Donald Jr. and Ivanka Trump won the week: The best two speakers of the week were two Wharton alumni: Donald Jr (2000) and Ivanka Trump (2004). More impressively, they offered very different types of speeches, though both were very helpful to their father.

Donald Jr. presented his father as someone genuinely fond of working men, saying, “He listened to them and he valued their opinions as much and often more than the guys from Harvard and Wharton locked away in offices away from the real work.” As Trump Jr. described growing up on construction sites and his father’s love for his workers, his father’s claim that he is fighting for working people became more real to those present. Further, Donald Jr. demonstrated a much better understanding of Republican orthodoxy as he subsequently tossed red meat to the crowd. Unsurprisingly, people across the media are speculating that he may run for political office in the near future.

But even more impressive was Ivanka Trump, whose speech was a turning point at the RNC. In important ways, Ivanka is everything her father is not: diplomatic, conciliatory, thoughtful, consistently eloquent, and a builder of bridges rather than walls.

And she clearly knew that her father’s favorability with women is dismal, as her speech focused on her father’s role as a fighter for women. She described a caring father who designed buildings while she played with Legos at his side as a little girl. But speaking as a successful female executive herself, she directly rebutted the charge that her father mistreats women, saying, “At my father’s company, there are more female than male executives. Women are paid equally for the work that we do and when a woman becomes a mother, she is supported, not shut out.”

But Ivanka went further, and possibly gave the most feminist Republican political speech in the history of the party. Earlier in the day, Paul Manafort, her father’s top aide, placed his foot in his mouth by saying that women will vote for Trump because “their husbands can’t afford paying for the family bills.” Ivanka directly rebutted this ignorance, saying, “Women represent 46 percent of the total U.S. labor force, and 40 percent of American households have female primary breadwinners.” She then reminded the crowd that women make around 83 cents for every dollar earned by a man. Beyond just equal pay, she pledged to work with her father on more affordable childcare and maternity leave, something GOP politicians rarely mention. No wonder CNN is inviting readers to compare her statements to Hillary Clinton’s!

Last night, a political star was truly born in Ivanka Trump. Her father would be wise to place her before TV cameras as frequently as possible. Moreover, the Republican Party would be wise to seriously consider the priorities that Ivanka outlined for women. If the GOP wants to be the party of the working people, then it must be the Party of working women. Ivanka gets that, and promises that her father does too.

Love or hate her father, Ivanka has the potential to be a 2016 game changer.

3. The Gay Old Party: A few weeks ago, I wrote a column suggesting that the GOP was undergoing a subtle but noticeable shift towards being more LGBTQ-friendly. Shortly thereafter, the Party made me look ridiculous when it released the most anti-gay platform in its history. But on the final day of the RNC, Donald Trump made it clear that he welcomes LGBTQ citizens into his new GOP.

First, PayPal founder Peter Thiel made history as the first openly gay speaker to address the RNC. He sharply criticized the GOP platform, labeling the debate over bathrooms for transgender citizens and the general culture war over gay rights a “distraction.” Most dramatically, after saying, “I am proud to be gay, I am proud to be a Republican, and most importantly, I am proud to be an American,” the crowd gave him thunderous applause. This would have been unthinkable at Mitt Romney’s RNC in 2012.

Later in the night, Donald Trump proved that Peter Thiel did not stand alone. Recognizing that the terrorist attack in Orlando explicitly targeted the LGBTQ community, he promised “to do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology.” Just as significantly, he received thunderous applause from the very conservative crowd of GOP delegates, marking an acceptance of the LGBTQ community never before seen in the Republican Party. And Trump recognized the importance of this applause, breaking from his teleprompter to say, “And I have to say as a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said. Thank you.”

To repeat, that would have been unthinkable at Mitt Romney’s 2012 RNC. Last night marked an acceptance of LGBTQ people as a community by the Republican Party, which, to be clear, still opposes important gay rights. However, the acceptance itself is a significant moment, and not just for the Party.

It’s important for the LGBTQ movement itself.

5. The Party is still divided: Every party dignitary I spoke to at the RNC, including Calvin Tucker and Rep. Barletta, insisted that the Party leaves the Cleveland unified. Yet Ted Cruz demonstrated to the entire nation that the GOP is still divided. To be clear, the GOP does leave Cleveland more unified, with many prominent GOP politicians like Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell having given Trump their blessing. As I observed on Twitter, there were also significant divisions between some of the state delegations on whether to support Trump. On the one hand, the Pennsylvania, New York, California, and New Jersey delegates were fully behind Trump. On the other hand, the delegations that most clearly opposed Trump were from Colorado, Alaska, Utah, and Texas.

However, I do think that some media outlets are overstating the disunity at the RNC, as both Tucker and Barletta said in their interviews. I would estimate that around 90 to 95 percent of the delegates at the RNC will leave supporting Trump. While Ted Cruz certainly damaged Trump’s RNC, Cruz is already paying a high price for his decision. As GOP politicians widely denounce him as “selfish” or, as John Boehner called him, “Lucifer,” even around half of the Texas delegation angrily confronted their beloved senator about his failure to endorse Trump. Having spoken to dozens of RNC attendees, I can testify that Ted Cruz made many political enemies this week.

In 2020, he may regret that.

5. More of the Same: While Donald Trump smoothed some of his sharpest edges, he’s still fundamentally the same candidate he was in the GOP Primary. His proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States was represented as a plan to exclude travelers from certain countries (i.e. Muslim ones) afflicted by terrorism. While Trump made an effort to include minorities in his vision for America, he doubled down on his defense of the police, repeatedly promising to prioritize their protection rather than focusing on protecting black citizens from them. Further, he stuck to his highly unorthodox positions on foreign policy, threatening to withhold aid to NATO allies unless they helped pay for their defense. A few months ago, I wrote that Trump had the opportunity to undergo a major pivot into the general election.

Unlike past presidential candidates, he did not do that.