The idea was seductively simple: collapse a thousand scattered races into one roaring, televised moment of judgment. In that instant, every House district, every Senate fight, every governor’s race would be pulled into the gravitational field of a single narrative—loyalty or betrayal, strength or surrender. What began as a tactic became a test of whether politics could survive being turned into permanent apocalypse.
If it worked, Republicans could surf a wave of fear, anger, and belonging all the way through November, forcing even sleepy local contests into national psychodrama. But the risk was existential. A public exhausted by outrage might finally snap, punishing the very architects of the spectacle. That call in Detroit did more than propose a convention; it asked whether a democracy can endure when every election is staged like the last night before the world ends.