My wife and I watched the RNC Convention last night as part of a challenge of my Republican and Independent neighbor last night. They know me as the Democratic precinct committeeperson and a week or so ago out of personal friendship in that I helped track down their wayward 9-month old German Shepard invited us over along with a reciprocal challenge to watch the DNC Convention the following week. Since my Republican neighbor identifies himself as a moderate having moved from New York State a few years back and our other immediate neighbor call themselves Independents (from Illinois) there was little of the national polarization that can be present in Colorado Springs, CO.
As I watched the speeches I came away with three items that we all recognized. One, the speakers all spoke mostly about themselves and their personal journey to the conservative movement. Two, they offered little tangible evidence that what their philosophy or ideology will do specifically as in persuading Independent or swing voters except making assertions that it will. Three, the assertions lynchpinned their belief system on American or Republican mythologies and strawman assertions of projected motivations instead of calling upon tight evidence or data to substantiate their claims. These assertions bent to the mythical ideals of the power of American Individualism and Individual freedom that this will magically solve all our societal ills.
But it was the assertions that caught me as the tactic or method. They assert lies and offer no evidence outside of making the assertion. They assert how society will react and recover without offering any data again outside of making their logical assertion. What they actually say is "I believe therefore it is true, you need to believe because I believe this is true, and any evidence to the contrary is to be ignored or discounted or discredited because we believe what is true."
One other note is that at least for our Independent neighbor the false representation of placing Puerto Rico and Guam delegations up front to show more people of color is transparent and for them is a backfire. Sure it might be obvious stage craft but they know this is window dressing.