Okay, so less than 12 hours later, here is my takeaway on the RNC:

I watched every minute. Saw every speaker. Paid attention.

None of it was memorable. If you asked me to name the most important moments, I’d struggle to name 2.

1/

I’d struggle to recall the speakers not named Trump.

I couldn’t name one person who lastingly made an impression on me as someone to watch as a rising star.

Maybe Tim Scott. That’s about it.

2/

Events like these are sums of impressions. When done well, they advance themes and broad messages.

The RNC’s messaging was so scattered and fractured, it was hard to even find the themes let alone see how they were meaningfully advanced.

3/

The largest theme was “Trump is great. We love Trump.”

The second was “Under Biden, things would become... the way they are right now under Trump.”

4/

The rest were just absurd fictions debunked daily by what people see on the news and in their lives.

“We’ve done a great job on COVID.”

“The economy is actually recovering great!”

5/

Overall, the impression was that the Republican Party is just an 100-foot Trump towering over worshiping Lilliputians.

That’s the impression Trump demands to satisfy his broken self-esteem.

6/

It’s deadly to down-ballot Rs trying to cling to seats in an election with a deeply underwater incumbent.

The Campaign cemented fully that the election is a referendum on Trump himself.

7/

They could have gone 180 degrees in the other direction and ran on just the downstream outcomes of his presidency - which, sadly, are likely popular enough in aggregate to win.

Reduced immigration. Pro-business policies. Judges. Reduced involvement in global conflicts. Etc.

8/

They could have made their convention about everything OTHER THAN Trump.

They could have made him just the price of admission for a policy product enough (white) people want to buy.

9/

But Trump could never stomach a strategy which would make him anything less than the sole reason for the existence of air, water and earth.

So they appeased the Toddler King.

And that will prove to have been a very bad decision.

10/

Regardless of what it does or doesn’t do for Trump’s near term polls, it will have no lasting effect.

It did, however, squander the Republican Party’s one big chance to save itself from making a national election for control of the Senate and House about only Trump.

11/

Embattled Republican Members of Congress are now chained to the deck of the Trumptanic and along for the full cruise.

Trumpism is a cult with a leadership of one.

The RNC’s all-Trump-all-the-time programming did nothing for Ernst or McSally or Collins.

12/

Conventions always juice enthusiasm among a party’s diehards a bit.

That’s uncomfortable to watch. It’s uncomfortable to see any boost in enthusiasm in Trumpland.

But at the end of the day, while the RNC could have done major damage to Dems overall election chances, they didn’t

As a strategist by trade, I’m breathing a sigh of relief today.

Repubs had their single largest opportunity to craft and deliver a narrative not reliant on Trump himself.

Instead, they ran four days of puff pieces about the musical genius of a naked Nero.

14/

There is a very real chance that a year from now, as a post-Trump Republican Party looks at what went wrong, they’ll point to this RNC as a crescendo.

The Party reached one final fork in the road... and decided they’d just let the drunk guy drive even if it was over a cliff.

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