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A Winning Theme for an Unconventional Republican Convention

On Monday night, an unconventional Republican National Convention will open in a slimmed-down, less-than-physical version, sans balloons and a roaring crowd. One theme needs to be brought home, again and again. President Trump should make it the memorable line from his acceptance speech on Thursday evening to millions across the land of every creed, gender, race, persuasion, and from every state: American citizenship matters.

It is all-important, since the event will be viewed online and in snippets, and yet it needs to capture the widest viewer attention and make an overwhelming and spirited case for a second Trump term.

The overarching theme should come straight out of America’s bloodiest episode: The Civil War.

While playing Johnny Cash’s moving version of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the wording of the lines needs to be underscored by the president. 

The first stanza sets the tone, stating “His truth is marching on,” with the repeated refrain, “glory, glory, hallelujah.” His truth refers to the nation God called, and the founders birthed, based on the grand American ideal: freedom and justice for all.

The second verse advances the idea, “His day is marching on,” with the same refrain. Much like today, the day was in question given the nature of the rupture in the fabric of America, but it suggested she would prevail, with God’s help.

A number of verses galvanize the idea, “our God is marching on,” with the same restatement of praise in the refrain. Those notions of providence at work in America reverberate and have their roots in the Judeo-Christian civic culture that shapes the bonds that tie us and characterize who we are.

The concluding lines are, “let us live to make men free,” with a resounding twice repeated “glory, glory hallelujah.” The purpose of America was, is, and always will be liberty. We live as a nation of free persons, unlike any other. America is exceptional. 

America’s Glory vs. America’s Cancellation

The words and music from the abolitionist writer, Julia Ward Howe, were written in 1861 in the darkest era of our union as a country. With biblical allusions to Isaiah 63 and Revelation 19, the song quickly became the most popular American patriotic song. It needs to be again as we face a new, cold civil war and the cancellation of America by the leftists and their Soros-funded terrorists in the streets.

The idea expressed in the Battle Hymn, a ballad for the Republic, is that America’s soul is marching on; it continues moving through history as a light and beacon to all others. It cannot be dimmed, detoured, or snuffed out by bloody war, famine, disease, a virus, or foreign adversary. America was founded as a republic and Lincoln, the first Republican president, would fight to keep it so.  

Today, Trump faces similar forces trying to divide America, to manage and force its decline. They want to erase it and the civic culture it stands for, replacing it with unadulterated globalism. Their ideology of a borderless world and woke identitarianism is based on cultural Marxism, the absolute antithesis of America’s founding philosophy.

Trump must continuously draw the contrast, namely: America’s glory versus America’s cancellation. On the screen show the statues of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Grant and then their attempted removal by the violent Democratic mob.

Using that theme of American glory, rooted in a spiritual tradition and won in war, Trump needs to achieve one thing for the voting public: He must spell out the contrast of his patriotism against the Biden-Harris embrace of multilateral, multicultural, multipolar, multinationalism.

Trump’s civic nationalism, principled realism, and America First sovereignty must be contrasted with the Democratic goals to eradicate the rule of law, defund the police, strip the military, confiscate guns, enter into global treaties weakening America, and succumbing to the Chinese, who started a pandemic and are responsible for the crash of the booming U.S. economy. Make it clear that Biden is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party—and underline that Biden’s son took their payoff. Our elites want to go back to a CCP-dominated world where our jobs, intellectual property, and cash flow in only one direction, enriching the still-Maoist Chinese and themselves.

Patriotism vs. Wokeness

Trump should remind the large audience that the Republican Party is a force for freedom. The Democratic Party, by comparison, started the Civil War, wanted and defended slavery, divided the union, birthed segregation, and then the Ku Klux Klan. Today it is their cities, led by decades of crooked and dictatorial mayors that doom America to endless race riots, anarchy, slaughter, and shutdown. They have become socialistic and see the centralized state as savior, instead of the traditional and tested mediating structures of family, faith, and civic association. 

Trump needs to hammer the point that the senile Democratic nominee is standing on a nearly 50-year record of cronyism. It includes being consistently wrong on foreign policy decade after decade. He has long sought to cut social security and expand welfare. There has rarely been a tax Biden didn’t endorse and enthusiastically support. Regulation of the economy is his methodology. He has been both for and against the Hyde Amendment on abortion. He voted for the disastrous war in Iraq. Biden was also an early backer of NAFTA and never shirks from a trade deal that gives away American jobs. He is adamantly for globalism, the U.N., the Iran giveaway, the Green New Deal, and the Paris climate accords. 

Biden is tied to big money and gets all his support and funding from Wall Street. Big banks and the credit card industry brought him to the Senate way back when. “Beijing Joe,” as he is now known, got that moniker because he does the bidding of the Communist Party of China. China is seditiously helping him in his effort to win in 2020. His new wokeness, in contrast to his gaffe-prone former racism and sexism, wears like a new skin—uncomfortably. His self-anointed vice presidential nominee is a professional phony. A vote for Joe Biden is a vote to cancel America.

Trump should end his acceptance speech with the riveting story of Julia Ward Howe’s relative, Harriet Beecher Stowe, who penned Uncle Tom’s Cabin. A woman of unflinching strength, courage, and brilliance, she boldly opposed slavery, backed Lincoln and the Union, and went on to write some 30 books. She was the most influential woman of her day and her stances and clarity on social and economic issues made her so. And she was a Republican.

Trump should end with the loud refrain, “glory, glory, hallelujah, the truth is marching on!” and will continue to do so for four more years, if America’s citizens have the courage and audacity to keep Republicans in the White House, the Senate, and return them to the House of Representatives. Only by so doing can we keep our beloved country.

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About Theodore Roosevelt Malloch

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, scholar-diplomat-strategist, is CEO of the thought leadership firm The Roosevelt Group. He is the author of 18 books, including The Plot to Destroy Trump and, with Felipe J. Cuello, Trump's World: GEO DEUS. He appears regularly in the media, as a keynote speaker, and on television around the world. 

Photo: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images

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