The News
Milwaukee, WI — “These are my people. This is where I belong.”
So said Amber Rose — a onetime video vixen, anti-rape “Slut Walk” pioneer, abortion rights advocate, and OnlyFans performer — at the RNC Convention. The primetime audience gave her a standing ovation.
But Rose’s speech, which touched on her life as a mother and her gradual acceptance of Donald Trump, also provoked a ripple of division in a typically united Republican Party this week.
“The RNC gives a primetime speaking slot to a pro-abortion feminist and self-proclaimed slut with a face tattoo whose only claim to fame is having sex with rappers,” the conservative commentator Matt Walsh tweeted. “Truly an embarrassment. Not a single voter will be mobilized by this person.”
“No lies detected,” ‘The Blaze’ host Steve Deace replied.
“In a rare moment, Walsh is right,” a National Review article by Haley Strack declared — referring to follow-up comments from Walsh where he argued that “conservatism as a movement is in even worse shape than” he thought if suggesting someone like Rose shouldn’t be a prime-time Republican speaker was an “outrageous and offensive” take.
But the mainstream of the Republican Party right now sees Rose more as opportunity than threat — the reason she was on stage in the first place.
“Amber Rose telling her followers on OnlyFans to vote for Donald Trump shouldn’t be controversial at all,” Terry Schilling, president of the socially conservative American Principles Project, told Semafor. “The Republican Party should welcome all votes to support it in our quest to save America. If I were running, I would want as many Democrats to vote for me as possible. I tell people to ignore the clickbait and focus on winning — both in elections and on policy.”
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Shelby’s view
Some of these conservatives are worried about Rose because of what she represents: A Republican Party that absorbs secular, pop culture norms, and trades religious conservatism for something easier. And, beyond that, these concerns dive into broader anxieties among more traditional Republicans worried about what gets left behind in a fully MAGA party: The tapered-down platform on abortion and picking a Ukraine-aid skeptic as vice president being two notable topics I’ve heard grumbled about this week.
“I don’t want to be saying you shouldn’t have Amber Rose speak, because you want to be expanding, you want to be reaching out to new converts,” as Marc Short, who formally served as Mike Pence’s chief of staff, put it. “At the same time, though, I think the choice of speakers on Monday came on the heels of significant [change] to the platform.”
“It’s just the combination of the factors, the timing, is alarming,” he added.
It’s taboo to even bring up within the party these days, but for years a defining debate between what became the “Never Trump” Republicans and those who stayed in the GOP was also how Trump’s personal qualities, including his sexual ethics, would transform their voters’ expectations. He arrived at the convention freshly convicted in a case involving hush money payments to an adult film actress, and Rose’s presence on the stage was another reminder of how Trump has changed the GOP’s relationship to secular culture.
To be clear, the defining feature of this Republican National Convention is party unity around Trump. At the convention this week, a debate over a reality TV star is ultimately just a tiny fracture.
But it’s worth keeping an eye on these little divides: They could widen after a Trump victory, when the party is no longer just focused on a critical upcoming election and can return to debating its future more openly.
Notable
Here at the RNC, there are hints everywhere at how the party is changing drastically, Politico detailed earlier this week.