Texas is supposed to be where Republicans go when they want to feel safe. President Donald Trump carried the state by 14 points in 2024, and Democrats have not won a statewide election there in more than three decades. Red or dead, as they say.
Yet, for the next two days, the GOP is taking over the American Airlines Center in Dallas for the first-ever midterm election party convention amid fears Republican candidates could suffer a set of nasty defeats this November. Even Texas itself is providing cause for concern. The Senate race between Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico is now rated a toss-up by the Cook Political Report, while Governor Greg Abbott faces a far stiffer challenge than Republicans would have expected just a few months ago.
But the GOP's solution to drum up support in the Republican heartland looks remarkably similar to the problem that made such an unprecedented midterm convention necessary in the first place. To treat a snakebite, doctors use antivenom made by exposing animals to controlled doses of the very poison they are trying to neutralize. The Republican Party is trying the political equivalent: using a controlled dose of Donald Trump to cure the damage caused by Donald Trump.
Strip away the balloons, cowboy branding and 109 scheduled segments, and you'll find this is not really a convention in the traditional sense. The RNC officially describes Dallas as a showcase for its candidates and policies ahead of the midterms, but there are no candidates to nominate and no platform to approve. In reality, the two-day event is a love fest for the one man not up for election this year.
Trump will make appearances at the convention on both days, delivering one of two keynote speeches—the other is left to Vice President JD Vance—before closing out the show on Thursday night. Convention attendees will also be able to get their hands on the kind of woefully overpriced merch you would have expected to scoop at a Trump rally in 2024, including a $16 beer koozie depicting the 80-year-old president as the Marlboro Man complete with horseback pose, white Stetson and a "Dallas" logo where the cigarette brand's name would normally sit. Trump himself has made no attempt to conceal the play.
"The problem that we have," he told supporters recently, is that, when he is not on the ballot, "his people don't come" to vote for senators and members of Congress. "So what I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I'm on the ballot." It is a bold strategy given the trajectory of his presidency so far. Trump began this term with an approval rating of 47 percent, according to Ipsos polling.
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