GOP jaws are dropping at the policy platform former President Donald Trump and his MAGA allies are presenting at the Republican National Convention, according to a new report.
Multiple Republicans told Politico this week they were shocked by the sudden shift toward economic populism and isolationism and away from religious and fiscal conservatism seen at the Milwaukee gathering.
"What we’re witnessing now is a full on frontal assault on conservatism,” said Marc Short, onetime chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence. “That’s an enormous departure from where our party has been and I don’t think it’s a prescription for success.”
Short pointed specifically to RNC rhetoric blaming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for Russian President Vladimir Putin' invasion of Ukraine, anti-big business sentiment and a softened stance on abortion.
“I feel like yesterday and last night went a step further," said Short. "You have speakers that are basically ... referring to job creators as ‘corporate pigs.'"
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Short was not the only traditionalist Republican to profess shock at Teamsters President Sean O'Brien's speech during which he decried corporate elites and Right to Work laws that make it more difficult for unions to organize.
Trump's 2016 campaign adviser David Urban told Politico he said to his CNN co-host off-air, “Am I at the right convention?”
Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN), whom Politico notes is among the nation's wealthiest members of Congress, said O'Brien's remarks made him physically uncomfortable.
“I was starting to squirm a little bit on some of that stuff," Braun reportedly said. "That doesn’t mean you take the most outrageous stuff that he might have said, but you don’t dismiss some of the rest of it, and you find a new coalition.”
Politico notes mounting tensions were made even more obvious when former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis mounted the RNC stage only to be met with boos.
