Anne Lowery: “For the many Republicans who don’t benefit much from tax cuts, and never received the promised populist policies, identity politics and racial resentment are strong enough forces to tie them to the party. A study by the political scientists Alan Abramowitz and Jennifer McCoy, for instance, showed that Trump’s dog-whistling worked. In 2000, George W. Bush won two in three working-class white voters who evince considerable racial resentment, measured by asking them whether or not they agree with statements such as ‘If Blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites.’ Trump got nine in 10 of them.”

“Trump electrifies the party’s broader base with revanchism, nativism, and white nationalism, catering to the anxieties of a historically hyper-dominant group fast becoming a minority. Just take a look at who is speaking at the GOP convention to see what red meat looks like for red America: the couple who brandished guns at Black Lives Matter protesters in St. Louis and Nick Sandmann of Covington Catholic High School, whose interaction with the Native American activist Nathan Phillips in front of the Lincoln Memorial went viral in 2019. Or, in the absence of a national 2020 manifesto, take a look at the Texas platform: Delegates picked top priorities including banning gender-confirmation procedures, protecting monuments, purging the voter rolls, and preventing teenagers from getting abortions or obtaining birth control without parental consent, all potent fronts in the culture war. ‘Policy doesn’t matter much’ to winnable conservative voters, Brent Buchanan, a Republican pollster, told me. ‘It’s more about personalities and principles.'”