President Donald Trump is not on the ballot in November, but he is throwing himself a convention — and the two-day, televised campaign-rally spectacle about to play out in Dallas couldn’t come at a worse time for a president drowning in domestic and foreign policy failures, or the Republican candidates wary of being attached to him.
Reuters/Ipsos polling in August put Trump’s approval rating at 33%, the lowest level of his second term, with 64% disapproving. A Republican quandary is on full display as some strategists worry that putting Trump at the center of the midterm campaign effort could repel swing voters, while others argue that the president remains essential to mobilizing the Republican base.
No candidate will publicly admit that Trump is the reason for staying home. But from Sen. Susan Collins in Maine to House Republicans in Michigan and Iowa, some of the party’s most vulnerable candidates have decided that two days with voters back home are more valuable than two nights in the television glow of Trump’s Dallas spectacle.
To make matters worse, the convention is scheduled on the same nights as the season openers of the NFL, perhaps the one American institution that commands a more loyal following from Trump voters than does Trump himself.
Centering Trump in a midterm convention that has no formal convention work (debating policies or platforms, formalizing nominations, etc.) is a striking choice at this moment.
The convention’s fundraising model raises its own questions. State parties have marketed premium access using titles such as “honorary delegate,” though no formal delegate business will take place. The Texas GOP offered packages reportedly ranging from $5,000 for an honorary guest to $20,000 for honorary-delegate status. Other state parties have promoted their own paid packages. Party organizations describe these offers as fundraising.
The sale of ceremonial status is yet another example of Trump-era politics converting proximity, access and spectacle into revenue. So far, reporting suggests the beneficiaries are party organizations and campaign efforts. But the pricing arrangements have also sparked questions about whether the grass-roots activists who knock on doors and otherwise power campaigns can afford to attend.
Centering Trump in a midterm convention that has no formal convention work (debating policies or platforms, formalizing nominations, etc.) is a striking choice at this moment. Trump returned to office promising lower prices and an end to prolonged foreign wars. Yet he has waged military conflict against Iran since February. Some 80% of Americans expected U.S. involvement to continue for an extended period, Reuters reported in August, and only 1 in 5 believed the war had been worth its costs.
Those costs are no longer abstractions. Over Labor Day weekend, regular gasoline averaged roughly $4.14 a gallon — nearly $1 more than a year earlier — while diesel reached a record-high $5.85. Much of that increase is attributed to the conflict’s disruption of oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, as well as refinery constraints and other global supply problems. Rising fuel and transportation costs reach Americans not only at the pump but also through the cost of groceries and delivered goods.
The location of “TrumpCon” should also not be lost on anyone. It’s not merely a nod to the intensifying Texas Senate race between Trump-backed Republican Ken Paxton and Democratic nominee James Talarico. The GOP chose Dallas as the host city at a time when Republicans are imbuing politics with vicious Islamophobic themes.
It’s not just Texas officials, though I pointed out earlier this year how ugly things had gotten there. Vice President JD Vance, who is scheduled to speak at the convention Wednesday, has gotten in on the hate with renewed and intensified Islamophobic rhetoric against prominent Muslim politicians such as Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed. The Council on American-Islamic Relations reported 8,683 anti-Muslim and anti-Arab complaints in 2025, the highest annual total since the organization began tracking them in 1996.
Some congressional activity provides other context that could anger voters ahead of Election Day. Lawmakers recently approved a stopgap measure funding the federal government only into December, in the wake of last year’s record 43-day federal shutdown and the subsequent 76-day shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. While Republicans and Democrats blame each other for those impasses, voters are likely to see temporary funding patches and repeated shutdowns as evidence of a governing system struggling to perform one of its most basic duties.
Organizers hope the two-day Trump fest will rally voters enough to maintain the GOP’s congressional majorities. Certainly, the convention reveals the party’s ideological wager: that Trump remains its most effective mobilizer despite his low approval ratings, Americans’ economic anxiety and voters’ opposition to the Iran war. In banking on Trump, the party continues to shrink itself around one leader spewing hate and divisiveness.
But with Trump not actually on the ballot, the electoral question is whether Republicans can make a midterm election about him without also making every vulnerable Republican candidate answer for the parts of Trump’s record American voters dislike.
By building an unprecedented two-day convention around the president, the party is testing that proposition in prime time.
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