Baseball fans watching last week’s MAGA-dominated Republican National Convention likely would have admired the dexterity with which the party succeeded in pulling off a political version of the “hidden ball trick.” The hidden ball trick is a play in which “a team deceives the opposing team about the location of the ball, usually to tag out a runner.
The ball that the Republicans were concealing is the party’s real position on such hot-button issues as abortion, January 6, and election denialism. The hope was to deceive independent voters in swing states into thinking that former President Donald Trump is more moderate and more committed to unifying the country than he really is.
Hiding the ball on politically unpopular or hot-button issues may be the kind of electoral ploy that even Machiavelli would admire, but it is as bad for democracy as the outright lies Trump is notorious for peddling
President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 campaign makes it particularly important to recognize that the Republican Convention delivered a masterclass in evasion and lying by omission. That it did so well in hiding the ball is a testimony to the professionalism and discipline of the people running Trump’s campaign.
But voters should be aware that what happened at the RNC is just another example of the willingness of the MAGA crowd to do whatever is necessary to return to power in Washington, DC.
Let’s start with abortion.
Project 2025’s roadmap for a second Trump administration laid out a radical position on abortion. As an article in The Hill notes, its plan for the Department of Health and Human Services “calls for revoking Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, which is used in more than half of abortions nationwide.”
Project 2025 says that “Abortion pills pose the single greatest threat to unborn children in a post-Roe world.” It also suggests using “a 19th century law called the Comstock Act to prosecute people who send abortion pills or other abortion tools through the mail.”
In the run up to the RNC, Trump, who regularly takes credit for ending Roe v. Wade and eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion, said about Project 2025’s recommendation about abortion, “From what I’ve heard…[t]hey’ve gone, really, too far.” At the same time, the former President reiterated his claim that he “did a great job getting rid of Roe v. Wade.”
But you would hardly have known about that claim from anything said at the RNC or in its platform. An analysis done by CNN found that “The word ‘abortion’ appeared 35 times in the 2016 Republican platform. It only appears one time in [the 2024] document.”
According to a report posted at Reason.com, in the past, the party platform “called for a constitutional amendment to protect unborn children. Now, it says abortion should be left to the states.”
In its public pronouncements, the GOP seems to be trimming its sails on abortion because “in the past two years, since the Supreme Court overturned Roe and some states have enacted strict abortion bans, it’s become clear that absolutist positions on abortion are not an election-winning strategy.”
The recently completed convention was notable in its almost complete silence on the abortion issue. Neither Trump nor his ardently pro-life running mate, JD Vance, used the word “abortion” in their acceptance speeches.
Other speakers, Politico notes, “made only passing references to the issue—the ‘unborn’ being ‘made in the image of God;’ prosecution of ‘pro-life activists;’ and a broad reference from former Trump senior counselor Kellyanne Conway to ‘protecting life.’”
In fact, the New York Times observes that “the word ‘abortion’ did not appear in the 110,000 transcribed words (from convention speeches), though the phrase ‘born and unborn’ appeared twice, and ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ each appeared once.
Mike Elder, a delegate from South Carolina, said the Republicans’ messaging shift “was smart to appear less “hard line….[because] [w]e want to win.”
So successful was the party in hiding the ball on abortion that one anti-abortion activist said, “You had some really strong pro-life leaders up there with really wonderful records who could’ve said something and didn’t… that’s disappointing.”
It is also disappointing for those who believe in democracy. Hiding the ball is a danger for voters.
But the Republicans seemed not to be troubled by that. They understand that their best hope of victory requires pulling the wool over voters’ eyes on some key issues.
Another place where the GOP pursued the hidden-ball strategy was on January 6 and election denialism.
On the campaign trail, Trump’s message about January 6 has been unmistakable. The Associated Press notes that “Last year, Trump called January 6 a “beautiful day” and repeatedly calls the hundreds of people convicted of federal crimes for January 6, including attacks on police officers, “hostages” whom he has pledged to pardon if elected to a second term.”
As the New York Times puts it, “On the main stage at the Republican National Convention this week, some Trump campaign trademarks have been missing. There have been no celebrations of Jan. 6 rioters….”
Not a peep about January 6 being a beautiful day or pardons for the hostages in the Republican Platform or from any of the speakers at the RNC, including Trump himself.
And while the Times notes that “Figures in the election denial movement were given some notable roles in the convention including Michael McDonald, the delegate chosen to second Mr. Trump’s nomination and the chair of the Republican Party of Nevada, who has been indicted on a charge stemming from his role in the so-called fake elector plan,” the party also used the hidden ball trick when it came to the Big Lie about the 2020
There was “no talk of election ‘mules’ smuggling ballots. Even references to Democrats ‘cheating’ in elections are so spare they could be easy to miss.”
Among those references, the Times reports that the RNC “twice aired prerecorded video, in which…[Trump] tells supporters to ‘keep your eyes open because these people want to cheat and they do cheat, and frankly it’s the only thing they do well.’” But even there, Trump “did not directly say that the 2020 election was stolen or rigged.”
And only for a moment in his acceptance speech did Trump forget the RNC’s well scripted hidden ball strategy. He ad-libbed, “And then we had that horrible, horrible result that we’ll never let happen again, the election result. We’re never going to let that happen again. They used Covid to cheat. You’re never going to let it happen again.”
Trump quickly recovered and didn’t dwell on the Big Lie as he has done throughout the 2024 campaign.
The presidential election has just been reset. But what the RNC did last week remains as serious and significant as ever.
The RNC did well in pulling off its lying-by-omission strategy and in marketing what political scientist Lynn Vavreck calls “economies of truth.” In a democracy such “economies of truth” are, like outright lies, tools to ready citizens for life in an autocratic regime where, as the political theorist Hannah Arendt once said, “Nothing is true and everything is possible.”
In the end, it is up to all of us to see the hidden ball trick for what it is and keep our eye on the ball lest we end up casting our votes for a party which, if it takes power, will continue restricting abortion rights, celebrating the January 6 insurrection, and honoring election results only when it wins.
