Trump's 'pretend' plea in Dallas shows a GOP hollowed out
By Aoife Gallagher · Reporting from Dublin ·
When a political party asks its voters to engage in a collective act of imagination—to "pretend" a man is on the ballot when he is not—it is no longer running a campaign; it is managing a cult.
When a political party asks its voters to engage in a collective act of imagination—to "pretend" a man is on the ballot when he is not—it is no longer running a campaign; it is managing a cult.
At the first-ever Republican National Committee midterm convention in Dallas, dubbed "Trumpapalooza," Donald Trump delivered a plea that was as desperate as it was delusional. As reported by NPR, the U.S. President urged his supporters to "pretend, please, that I am on the ballot" to ensure they show up on November 3. It is a staggering admission of failure. The Republican Party has become so hollowed out that it can no longer motivate its own people with a platform, a promise, or a policy; it can only offer the ghost of a personality.
The High Cost of a Low-Propensity Gamble
The logic from the RNC is simple, if cynical. As France 24 notes, the party is centering Trump to rescue itself from "grim election forecasts." The strategy, echoed by Ohio’s Alex Triantafilou, is to activate "low-propensity voters" who only move for the man himself. This is the strongest case the GOP can make: that in a polarized age, the only way to win is to maximize the base, regardless of the cost to the center.
But that cost is now a bankruptcy. With an approval rating sitting in the low-to-mid 30s, as Dawn reports, Trump is not an asset; he is a ceiling. While the party celebrates in Dallas, Americans are, as Congressman Jason Crow put it, "being crushed by rising costs." By prioritizing the adrenaline of a rally over the anxiety of the kitchen table, the Republicans are betting that a few thousand "diehard Trump voters" can outweigh a national electorate exhausted by tariffs and instability. It is a gamble that mistakes noise for momentum.
A Perversion of the Great Man Strategy
This is not the first time a party has tried to save itself by hitching its wagon to a singular, towering figure. The mechanism mirrors the 1952 United States presidential election, where the GOP leveraged the immense national prestige of Dwight D. Eisenhower to break a twenty-year drought of executive power. Both instances saw a party in crisis abandon traditional candidate profiles to embrace a "savior" who could transcend party failure.
But where Eisenhower offered the stability of a general and the promise of institutional order, Trump offers the chaos of the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, where the party establishment first surrendered its soul to a populist disruptor. The 1952 strategy worked because it expanded the coalition; the 2026 strategy shrinks it. This isn't leadership; it is the centralizing of loyalty seen during the January 6 Capitol attack, where the party's identity was fused to one man's will, regardless of the institutional wreckage left behind.
The Mirage of the Common Sense Revolution
The Republican Party is currently operating on the hope that the 2016 United States presidential election can be repeated by sheer force of will. They believe that by framing the election as "the mainstream versus the extreme," as Rep. Brandon Gill suggests, they can frighten their base into the booths.
They are wrong. You cannot "pretend" your way to a majority when the projections—Democrats winning the House 230-205 and the Senate 51-49—are rooted in material reality. By centering a man who is toxic to the middle, the GOP is ensuring that the only people who show up are the ones who already agree with them. They are trading the possibility of a governing majority for the comfort of a cheering crowd.