Created Equal: How does the GOP adjust their strategy now that Biden is out?

The 2024 Republican National Convention was last week in Milwaukee. After Trump announced JD Vance, a U.S. Senator from Ohio, as his VP pick, he covered an array of policy plans. These include combating the impacts of inflation and immigration to appeal to union members and blue collar workers.

Though these groups have historically found representation in the policy goals of the Democratic party, winning their vote would be highly beneficial for Trump’s election prospects — especially in states like Michigan.

However, Trump and Vance’s campaign strategies are expected to switch course after President Joe Biden ceded his nomination for the Democratic Party and endorsed VP Kamala Harris as a potential replacement. One of the tactics currently being used is encouraging discourse that Harris is “too liberal” or a “DEI hire” among prominent Republican voices.  

To discuss the policies covered during this year’s Republican National Convention — and Former President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance’s possible campaign strategies in light of President Joe Biden exiting the presidential race — Andrea Bitely, Sarah Hubbard, Nancy Kaffer and WDET’s Russ McNamara joined Created Equal.

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Guests

Russ McNamara is a reporter and host for All Things Considered here at WDET. He attended the RNC and found the kindness of the attendees, paired with the policies they felt most strongly about, to be “discombobulating.”

“I did not have a problem with any single person I talked to. Everybody was grateful and open,” McNamara said. “However, everybody was super, super nice while they were chanting [“Send them back!”] in the back, which was a little bit discombobulating.”

Sarah Hubbard is the Republican Regent for the University of Michigan Principal at Acuitas. Hubard says that Republicans are eager to vote for Trump because they’re worried about how immigration is impacting their taxes, available social services and job availability. 

“I know that Republicans are concerned about open borders and free flow of people into the country — and what impact that has on jobs here, on the cost of social services here, on people that are coming in that have not paid taxes in this country and then are going to be taking advantage of everything we have to offer as a very generous U.S. and state government,” Hubbard said. “So Republicans are worried about that. They’re worried about impacts on taxes. They’re [also] worried about the liberal policies that Kamala Harris is going to bring to the table.”

Andrea Bitely is the former spokesperson for former Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, and is currently the political and communications strategist at Bitely Communications. She found it interesting that the RNC did not focus on issues like abortion, though it is a popular belief among conservative Americans.

“One thing I found very interesting was going back to that pro choice, pro life, anti-abortion rhetoric that we normally hear out of the Republican Party — we are not seeing anywhere in this platform,” Bitely stated. “[This] is extremely surprising because many hardcore conservative voters are single-issue voters on that subject. If a candidate is not pro-life, there are many Republicans or many conservatives who will not vote for that candidate. So not having abortion mentioned in the 2024 party platform is shocking to me.”

Nancy Kaffer is the editorial page editor for the Detroit Free Press. She believes the rhetoric surrounding Harris’s policies doesn’t reflect her actual positions on the topic, rather, it’s a common Republican talking point for all Democratic candidates. 

“We’re going to hear, ‘Kamala Harris is the most liberal candidate ever,’ ‘she’s going to bankrupt us,’ ‘she’s going to give everybody health care,’ ‘she’s going to open the borders,’ — just like we heard about Joe Biden, like we heard it about Hillary Clinton, like we heard it about Obama,” Kaffer said. “This is a Republican talking point about whichever Democrat is a nominee, because it’s effective language to cue to the moderates who will decide the election that this person is not right for their values, and it doesn’t necessarily relate to the actual positions of the candidate at question.”