When we convened five top GOP strategists to discuss the future of their party back in June, the mood was glum. On the eve of a convention that would nominate an outsider to the top of the 2016 ticket—an unpredictable businessman who by then had alienated whole swaths of the Republican establishment—most of them chose the word “weak” to describe the Republican brand.
What a difference a presidential election makes.
When we assembled a similar group of GOP operatives and strategists on Friday—with two of the same people who had participated five months ago—the optimism was striking. The brand that had been weak in the summer was now “promising,” with “potential” to advance a conservative agenda—boosted, in their eyes, not only by wins in the White House and Congress but also by the Democratic Party’s insistence this election on campaigning against Trump the man, rather than the GOP platform. “There was no fight with Republicans over our message or our policies or our positions,” said Jeff Roe, former campaign manager for Ted Cruz.
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