#Trump’s surprises are working and other commentary

The GOP convention “is the Trump presidency in microcosm,” notes The Washington Free Beacon’s Matthew Continetti: “Precedent is overturned” and “norms disregarded” to serve the Americans in the Trump coalition — “and the whole thing makes for great television.” Even with the first lady speaking on Night Two, “the real stars” included “a Maine lobsterman, a Wisconsin dairy farmer, a truck driver from Ohio and a ­police officer from New Mexico who adopted the child of a woman ­addicted to opiates.” And the president’s surprise pardon and naturalization ceremony “worked, both as political theater and as campaign strategy,” because “Trump’s interactions with normal Americans humanize him.” In short, “Democrats have reason to worry.”

Culture critic: Activists Target the Powerless

The videos of DC-area Black Lives Matter activists “harassing diners — surrounding them, screaming in their faces, declaring that anyone who doesn’t raise a fist in solidarity is a white supremacist” — are worse than footage of actual riots, writes John Daniel Davidson at The Federalist. They offer a “glimpse” of how “the attention and ire of the social-justice mob” winds up targeting “ordinary people minding their own business.” The harassment is “the kind of thing people do when they feel they are ascendant” — because the politicians have been appeasing them even when they riot and set cities across the nation on fire. “Having learned that the people in power will not stand up to them, they turn their attention to people with no power.” In all, “these are not people who really care all that much about . . . ushering in a more peaceful and just society. . . . They want one thing: to rule you.”

Riot watch: The Damage in Minneapolis

Three months after the George Floyd killing, “the Twin Cities are still reeling,” as Nic Rowan shows in a photo essay at The American Spectator. The damage is vast: In the Third Police Precinct, the center of the violence, “windows were smashed, stores were looted and whole strip malls were torched. You probably saw the videos when national attention was fixed on Minneapolis in June. What you couldn’t see was that the damage goes on for three miles.” For example: “The corner where the burned-out husk of the precinct stands is unrecognizable from how it looked when I visited last summer. The Target, which was looted throughout the worst of the riots, is closed.” Many other sites are the same. “It will take years for this section of the city to recover.”

RNC journal: Blacks Aren’t Beholden to Dems

“Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, praised for his speech at the Republican National Convention,” declared that “President Trump and the GOP are the party of law and order,” reports FoxNews.com’s ­Caleb Parke. “We cannot stand for lawlessness and chaos in this country,” Cameron said. Cameron, Kentucky’s first African-American attorney general, told Parke that Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s remarks on blacks show he is “taking our vote for granted.” He added: “Black folks are not monolithic in our thinking. We are the only group of individuals that is told we have to subscribe to one party,” namely, the Democrats. “I’m here to say, enough is enough, and I know that there are millions of African-Americans who look just like me [and] who aren’t in chains and have minds of their own to articulate their views and their values.”

Economist: Biden’s Tax Plan Lowers Incomes

“Joe Biden is running for president on a pledge to return the country to economic policies responsible for the slowest economic recovery since World War II,” snarks Noah Williams at City Journal. His tax hikes would “go far beyond” undoing President Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cuts, jacking up levies $4 trillion and likely shaving at least a half or a full percentage point from GDP growth. The plan would hit businesses hard, “leading to lower wages for workers” and “less investment.” It might even be “counterproductive in raising tax revenue.” Bottom line: Biden’s hikes “would be partly shifted onto workers” and “put the brakes on economic growth.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board