When Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio takes the stage in Milwaukee... he will complete the final stage in his transformation from foil to acolyte of former President Donald Trump... Rather, it makes him a better avatar for the tale Trump wants to tell.
Vance is a political convert, whose remaking of himself and his political image in order to thrive in Trump's Republican Party proves and reinforces Trump's power... And he will serve as a capstone for a convention that has been a conversion story unto itself.
Conversion is a defining feature of today's Republican Party, given how full it is of Republicans who did not much like Trump when he cannonballed into politics in 2016... Trump cares little about whether his converts are doing so for pragmatic reasons or moral ones.
The intraparty unity on display here is possible only because a lot of people have changed their minds about the former president over the past eight years... Trump himself, a former Democrat, has changed his politics, too.
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