The Trump GOP isn't as different as you'd think

There are notable differences of substance. Trump’s party has reversed itself on trade and jettisoned concern over deficit spending. The party is much less hawkish than George W. Bush’s GOP and much more skeptical of immigration than Ronald Reagan’s. It doesn’t have the focus of the 2004 Republican convention on terrorism or the 2012 Republican convention on out-of-control entitlement spending. It talks less of freedom and more of cultural issues.

And yet there is a clear through-line between today’s Republican Party and the GOP of the past several decades. Someone transported from the floor of a Republican convention in the 1980s, 1990s or 2000s to the Mellon Auditorium this year would find much that is weird and discomfiting—a reality TV star is president?—but unquestionably know where he or she was.

Put aside speeches by Republicans with careers that haven’t been defined by Trump, like Nikki Haley and Tim Scott, who could have said basically the same things at any Republican convention. Take instead Don Trump, Jr.’s forceful speech, which by lineage and inclination should be most representative of the Trump GOP.