What Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron did better than any other GOP convention speaker

It’s a difficult line, as Haley demonstrated by declaring America is not a racist country while describing the discrimination her Indian immigrant parents faced in South Carolina. She appeared to be trying to strike the balance as someone who unquestionably supports Trump but who also secretly might be looking forward to the day when he’s not president anymore, I wrote Tuesday.

Cameron might be searching for that same balance. But he did it a little more subtly, and his speech is getting praise from conservatives as a result. So let’s spend a moment on it, given that we’re likely to hear more from Cameron in the future.

Cameron carried forward Trump’s themes — attack Joe Biden, talk about “anarchists” threatening the American way of life — but he smoothed out the president’s harshest rhetoric and infused it with optimism, a quality that was promised at this convention but hasn’t been abundant.

While Trump threatens protesters who tear down Confederate statues with 10 years in prison, Cameron — a law enforcement official — offered a more balanced message by trying to acknowledge the grievances of Black Lives Matter protesters.

“Republicans will never turn a blind eye to unjust acts,” he said, “but neither will we accept an all-out assault on Western civilization.”

(By comparison, Haley emphasized how her family didn’t give in to grievance about racial injustice, seeming to suggest that is precisely what the protesters are doing.)

As Trump employs divisive strategies, Cameron stood out among the speakers with a pitch for unity. (Melania Trump also did this.)

“Despite our differences, we all want the same things for our children,” he said, “to have more opportunity than we did, to feel the dignity of work and believe if you play by the rules you can make a good life for yourself and your family.”

As Trump fails to address the weaknesses that have dragged him down in the polls, Cameron framed the Republican Party as the one with a plan to make people’s lives better, particularly minorities.

He conspicuously didn’t defend Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Rather, he brought up Biden’s much-maligned comment from this spring that if you’re Black and can’t decide whom to vote for, “you ain’t Black.” Biden said he was joking and retracted the comment, but it has stuck. Trump and his campaign seized on those comments. Here’s Cameron’s take on them:

“Mr. Vice President, look at me,” Cameron said, straight to the camera. “I am Black. We are not all the same, sir. I am not in chains. My mind is my own. And you can’t tell me how to vote because of the color of my skin.”

(He was speaking in an empty auditorium, though in normal times there would have been raucous applause at this line.)

But defending Trump is not without its struggles, putting politicians in an awkward position that may or may not trail them in their future careers post-Trump.

Cameron tried to portray Biden as the presidential candidate who offends Americans and minorities. “There is no wisdom in his record or plan, just a trail of discredited ideas and offensive statements,” he said.

Biden’s gaffes — which this election cycle have almost always been directed at Black voters — certainly trail him. But his opponent has a history of outright racist rhetoric, which Cameron made no mention of.

All of Cameron’s talk of a Republican Party that promotes unity is closer to a dream than reality, at least under Trump. “This country’s many faces comprise a family, not separate parts to be divided against each other” is a memorable line from Cameron’s speech — that could have been right at home in the Democrats’ convention.

In the most optimistic parts of Cameron’s speech, he pulled on the memories of legendary Republican presidents such as Abraham Lincoln, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan as “heroes who propelled an imperfect nation ever forward” and allowed the listener to infer that he might think the same of Trump.

Is that reality? Trump’s Republican critics warn, with increasing urgency, that the president is pulling the nation in a dangerous, isolationist direction as he befriends dictators and tears down allies while demeaning immigrants and minorities.

Cameron’s choice to speak at this convention as an obviously ambitious politician — he calls Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) a friend — was risky. If Trump loses in November and the Republican Party has a reckoning moment in which it rejects Trumpism, Cameron’s words on Tuesday night will echo.

But in the more likely scenario in which the party emerges from the Trump era divided, Cameron just proved himself adept at inhabiting both worlds. That will be a handy accomplishment for a politician who wants to succeed in a party with an uncertain future.

Source:WP