Republicans who spent the week banging the table on the Anyone but Hillary bandwagon will find those tables turned on them in the fall election says Katie Packer Mitt Romney’s deputy campaign manager in 2012.

“I don’t think that’s a winning message in a national election” Packer said at a Politico Hub gathering at downtownCleveland’s City Club. “Except for rabid Republicans the rest of the country doesn’t hate Hillary.”

Trump often ridiculed Romney during the primary campaign calling him a “loser” but Packer says Trump would be better served internalizing the conclusions from the “2012 autopsy” the Republican National Committee conducted after Romney’s defeat. That report called on Republicans to become more inclusive and cultivate female black and Hispanic voters. “This is not a party that people beyond our base want to join ” Packer said.

However the geopolitical earthquakes of the last four years especially the tidal wave of global Islamic jihad have rendered some sections of the autopsy dead on arrival.

The section recommending a kinder and gentler immigration policy is certainly a nonstarter said Jeff Roe who managed Ted Cruz’s primary campaign.

Roe contends Trump can win in November by increasing his share of the white male turnout by 3.1% from Romney’s 59% showing in 2012 as long he holds Romney’s numbers among minorities.

And if not? “Trump could still win with zero votes among minorities as long as he gets 70% of whites.”

Topping Romney’s numbers would be a major achievement for the Trump campaign especially considering its get-out-the-vote infrastructure is still lacking. Plus Trump is challenged by Hillary’s strength among white college-educated voters: some 60% of college-educated whites consider the Donald unqualified to be president. Roe says Hillary Clinton’s messaging to this battleground group has sunk in.

“The Democrats’ whole campaign is about making him look dangerous and unsteady” Roe told me.

Asked how Trump can counterattack Roe replied: “Mike Pence is a good start. Teleprompters are a good start. So is showing some flashes of constitutional rule of law and supporting basic freedoms.”

While Trump’s tough-guy messaging might entice some white Democrats to crossover top Republicans who have been bankrolling the party for years aren’t writing checks for Trump; in fact many have already written out checks for Hillary says Rich Tafel founder of Public Squared a strategy company for social entrepreneurs and a senior fellow at the Institute for Cultural Evolution based in Boulder Colorado.

“I do a lot of work on the future of the political right and in this election Republicans are saying ‘I’m homeless.’ ”

Tafel said he rejects the narrative that the party elites are out of touch with the average GOP voter. “It’s not just the elites” Tafel said. “It’s Republicans who care about religious freedom and how minorities are treated. There’s an anxiety about the party becoming a white-nationalist party. Winning a race like that in a pluralistic country is very dangerous no matter how this election turns out.”

Is the new face of the Republican Party under Donald Trump a disaster for the party a passing fad or the future of the GOP?

“Trump has come along and captured lightning in a bottle” Katie Packer says. “We have to wait and see if he succeeds. If he doesn’t there will be a real effort to decide if we’re a party of principles or a party of anger on a couple of issues.”

Unenthusiastic as she is about Trump’s chances in November Packer pointed to one ray of light. “Hillary should be killing us. She should be up by 20 points. Her problem is she’s unworthy untrustworthy and paranoid."

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If the Republican Party is to overcome its reputation as the party for the country-clubbersArkansassenator Tom Cotton may be its new standard-bearer.

Taking a shot at Bernie Sanders for supporting a minimum wage hike to “15 bucks an hour” as Sanders would put it Cotton said: “If we were a nation of economic opportunity we wouldn’t have to worry about raising the minimum wage because if a boss won’t give someone a raise he can just walk across the street and get a better-paying job.”

Cotton made his statements at a breakfast address to theOhiostate delegation. The freshman senator took issue with some Republicans inWashingtonwho say that the party needs to win the confidence of the nation. Citing GOP control of Congress and the fact that 31 out of the nation’s 50 governors are Republican Cotton said: “We don’t have to show we can govern. We areAmerica’s governing party. Why? Because we address the very real and practical anxieties of everyday working Americans and not the fantasy anxieties of liberals.”

But not every Republican senator has a safe seat like Cotton who was elected just last year. Several incumbents are in trouble among them Ohio Republican senator Rob Portman who is locked in a tight reelection battle with formerOhiogovernor Ted Strickland. Portman needs his home-state governor John Kasich a popular and skilled campaigner at his side yet Kasich boycotted the convention and is still in the anti-Trump camp. Portman too has kept Trump at arm’s length but may no longer be able to alienate the top of his party’s ticket.

Look for the same problems to surface in other Senate races such as inArizonaPennsylvania andIllinois where John McCain and Pat Toomey and Mark Kirk — none Trump fans — are fighting to retain their seats.

The night before Mike Pence’s acceptance speech I sat with Rep. Steve King an Iowa Republican who remembers Pence fondly from the decade they served in Congress together. King says Jewish voters with strong conservative bona fides will find Pence to be a comrade in arms. “He has established a strong fidelity toIsraeland is one of the best friends toIsraelanywhere on the planet ” King says. “He’s a constitutionalist an evangelical he’s pro-life he’s pro-marriage and he’s a fiscal hawk.”

Pence may have been a fly on the wall during our interview because one of his first lines to delegates echoed King’s endorsement: “I’m a Christian I’m a conservative and I’m a Republican in that order.”

Pence 57 is governor ofIndiana and served 12 years in the US House of Representatives. He also spent five years in talk radio where he dubbed himself “Rush Limbaugh on decaf”; and his presentation skills are polished and his voice well modulated.

But Pence told delegates his most important job is spelled “D-a-d.” And that’s one thing Pence says he has come to admire about Trump after meeting his family. “You can’t fake good kids.”

He didn’t disappoint theIsraelsupporters in the crowd getting rousing cheers by saying: “If Americans should know one thing it’s thatAmericastands behindIsrael.”

His next line was to note that Barack Obama’s presidency ends in six months a date Prime Minister Netanyahu has no doubt marked prominently on his calendar.

Tom Marino a third-term congressman and Donald Trump’sPennsylvaniacampaign chairman listened politely as the EU’s ambassador to theUS David O’Sullivan defended a litany of international trade agreements that pro-Trump forces abhor.

“No country has ever made a success out of protectionism” O’Sullivan said. “It’s an absolute illusion to think you can turn back the clock. It makes more sense to manufacture only what you need — and can produce efficiently — and trade for the rest.”

When Marino’s turn came to speak at this American Jewish Committee panel discussion he lowered the boom but in dulcet tones.

“Walk throughMain StreetAmerica. Get out of the ivory towers where you theorize on what should be happening. Why do you think there’s a revolution going on inAmerica?” Marino asked.

He has cause to gripe.Pennsylvaniahas lost 300000 manufacturing jobs over the past 20 years. In President Obama’s first term alone 10% of the state’s manufacturers closed or moved.

Trump says he will make “Made in theUSA” great again. Most economists say that’s a pipe dream. Marino says theUSjust needs an administration that makes keeping jobs at home a priority. “We put men on the moon and did heart transplants” Marino said. “It’s about time we had an administration that steps up and says respectfully to the rest of the world that you have to work with the United States. You can’t just be our friend when it’s convenient for you.”

Despite Marino’s pronouncements look for some of the hard edge on trade to soften during the course of the campaign.

The view from here isn’t always the view from there so if Donald Trump wins in November he will be pressured to soften some of his more sweeping positions. And some of that pressure will come from insiders.

At a Politico event Stephen Moore one of Trump’s chief economic advisors suggested that Trump is being nudged in the direction of more open trade. “I think you’ll see some movement in that direction during the course of the campaign.”

With US economic growth stuck at an anemic 1.5% many economists say reopening trade deals — as Trump proposes — will spinAmericainto recession.Mooresays on the contrary Trump will ramp up economic growth to 4%.

“It’s not too hard. We can get a 1% increase in growth just by expanding energy. American oil gas and coal can add $200 billion to the economy. Cut the business tax rate down to 15% and get rid of the double tax on savings and you can add another percentage point there.”

The working assumption among most political analysts — who missed the Trump boat throughout the primary season — is that Donald Trump will lose big in November 2016 the Republican Party will be torn asunder and a new savior will emerge from the scrap heap.

With that backdrop delegates were looking for cues as to whether speakers Scott Walker Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz primary opponents whom Trump defeated handily would position themselves for 2020 or bury the hatchet and endorse Trump.

Walker’s speech was short and themed “we deserve better.” Most of his speech was a Hillary bash. The best he said about Trump was to repeat the mantra that if you don’t vote for the Republican nominee you’re voting for Hillary.

Rubio made a two-minute appearance on a video screen that seemed almost as short as the campaign he ended so abruptly. It was a disappointment for fans of Rubio who due to his tardiness in deciding whether he would run for reelection for his Senate seat is now locked in a tight battle inFlorida’s August 30 primary. Until he gets past that there is little sense in discussing 2020.

Cruz entered to a warm ovation but the warmth soon evaporated. He delivered his standard stump address without issuing an endorsement.

If anyone has 20-20 vision it’s Ted Cruz. But by blindly ignoring the will of the delegates who nominated Donald Trump Cruz took the political gamble of his career.

Jeff Roe says theTexassenator’s address was “a rare occurrence of a politician actually speaking his mind.”

That said Roe admitted the episode will haunt Cruz for some time to come. “As a political calculation it was borderline reckless. There’s no upside.”

However that doesn’t mean it was an impulsive decision. Roe said Cruz spent four days going over his speech and taking counsel from a wide range of conservative Republicans and supporters. “It was never a consideration for him to endorse [Trump].”

“But now he’s perceived as a Hillary Clinton enabler” Roe said. “It’s a raw political moment in our party between two candidates who’ve been duking it out for months.”