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2020 Dem convention Milwaukee
Due to COVID-19, much of the 2020 Democratic convention planned for Milwaukee went virtual.
I hope the Republicans pick Nashville for their 2024 convention and not the other choice, Milwaukee.
I hope this despite the fact that trying to land the convention is a bipartisan affair. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, a Democrat, is working with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) on this, and a host of Milwaukee’s movers and shakers from both sides of the aisle are supporting the effort. The same was true when Milwaukee was awarded the 2020 Democratic convention, which was all but canceled due to COVID.
The trouble with the 2024 GOP confab is that they’ll probably show up. And among those showing up will almost surely be Donald Trump, unless, though unlikely, he runs for the nomination but doesn’t get it. Then he’ll stay in Florida, sulk and lob insults at whoever does get the nomination.
But even if Trump stays away, the party is no longer what it was. I may have disagreed with the party of Ronald Reagan, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Tommy Thompson, but I didn’t think they wanted to destroy the country. I thought they wanted smaller government and lower taxes, which wasn’t all bad. They kept the Democrats honest.
Today’s Republicans adhere to no principles. In 2020 the party didn’t even bother with a platform. It essentially said that it was for and against whatever Donald Trump supported and opposed. For four years those who knew better aided and abetted Trump. Nothing Trump did or said could prompt Mitch McConnell or Paul Ryan or any other “responsible” leader of the party to really stand up to him, though credit the likes of Romney and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) for being faint voices in the wilderness.
Then when Trump spewed lies about his defeat, the party’s leaders were slow to set him straight. That contributed to Trump’s inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection, which was all about trying to forcibly overturn a free, fair and accurate election.
And, after barely two weeks of flirting with breaking with Trump, McConnell announced that he would not vote for his impeachment and new House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy flew to Mar-a-Lago to plead for Trump’s forgiveness. Republican establishment pollster Whit Ayres said that the insurrection would set up a “fight for the soul of the party.” It was a pillow fight and it was over in a couple of weeks. Trump won.
Since then the party, at every level, has spent more than a year doing all it can to undermine the very foundation of our democracy — our system of elections.
So it’s not just that I disagree with the Republicans on policy. I actually thought it was a good thing to have one party that believed in government’s ability to solve problems and another that warned of too much government. But now the Republicans have abandoned their support for liberal democracy itself. They would politicize our elections and never concede an election they lost. They follow one man — and a man who embodies the very worst characteristics of human nature — instead of any principles at all. They embrace blood and soil nationalism instead of the idea of America, which is about classical liberal values, not one particular race or religion. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that they have become the de facto Fascist Party of America.
Then, of course, there are the practical considerations. The Republican convention will attract — as it well should — protestors of every stripe. That will be expensive to manage and there’s always the danger of some sort of violence or at least ugliness. I don’t think it would be Chicago 1968 or Nuremberg 1935, but it certainly has the potential to be unpleasant. Why do we want our state’s biggest city to be a backdrop for that?
All things considered, do I really want my state to welcome these people to Wisconsin? No, I do not. I want them to stay away. Let them eat chicken and waffles.
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos. He’s the author of Light Blue: How center-left moderates can build an enduring Democratic majority.
