Turning Point USA's AmericaFest is very much like a circus, and I mean that in the best possible way. A circus can travel anywhere, put up its tents and put on a show.
The scale of last weekend's event in Phoenix was nothing short of monumental, with 31,000 in attendance. That isn't so far off of the estimated 50,000 souls who went to the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
To put it bluntly, TPUSA, along with other organizations, are capable of producing a much-needed midterm convention and a city like Phoenix, which hosted the conservative confab admirably, is exactly where it should be held.
As I've written in this column before, a midterm GOP conventionmidterm GOP convention, though a tad unconventional as a concept, is exactly what Republicans need to put Trump and his policy wins front and center before the electorate.
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John and Lucy, a couple in their 40s who I met at the event, told me it was their first AmFest.
"The energy is amazing," Lucy said. "I didn't know what to expect, but I didn't expect this."
John concurred, saying, "This is like a rock concert, fireworks and loud music, I think it gets everyone pumped up."
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The atmosphere at AmFest was a whizzing and whirring technicolor explosion of light and sound, all resounding toward the goal of forwarding the conservative movement.
There is little doubt that 10 minutes at a pulsating and intense live event like Amfest - or a Trump rally - is worth 10 days of on-screen ads. It hits attendees in each of their five senses, and 50,000 may not sound like much, but that's a veritable army to send back home in an off-year election.
One eager young conservative I met, Matt, who is studying finance in grad school and sports what might now be called the TPUSA mustache, told me, "I'd totally go to a midterm convention. Hell, I'd just go for the parties."
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That may sound a bit shallow to some, but it also sounds like exactly the kind of positive energy that a winning political movement needs.
When it comes to the question of where to hold a midterm convention, Phoenix can teach would-be convention planners a lot about the key question of location, location, location.
In places like New York City or Chicago, AmFest would have brought out hundreds of protesters, including many of the dangerous Antifa variety. Even vastly smaller events like a recent Mom's For Liberty conference in Philadelphia attracted angry mobs.
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In Phoenix, I never saw more than a dozen or so, and they were far more silly than menacing.
It's worth noting that the local news channels did choose to focus almost as much attention on this bedraggled band of apparently unemployed naysayers as they did the tens of thousands inside the event.
Funny that.
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But around the clean and very pretty downtown of soft light and perfect temperatures, one felt little to no resentment or pushback at the sudden flood of red MAGA hats and sparkly Trump outerwear. Everything was cool.
I asked one of my Uber drivers, a longtime Phoenix resident, why he thought the city was so welcoming in this way.
"Nobody is uptight about politics. Everyone has weird ideas, we have weird politicians," he told me, laughing at his own joke for moment before adding, "It's always been like this."
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Phoenix is not the only prime location for a midterm convention. Oklahoma City is another, as is Nashville. These are thriving places with better than average governance that truly do highlight the accomplishments of the Trump administration.
JD VanceJD Vance told the crowd at AmFest, "Why do we penalize corporations that ship American jobs overseas? Because we believe in the inherent dignity of human work and every person who works a good job in this country."
The best place to sell that very popular message is in the smaller American cities where the jobs are being created, not one of the great metropolises still clinging to the dream that one day everyone can just work for the government.
As of now, the GOP has somewhere just north of seven months to put together a midterm convention, but the good news is that it is also flush with campaign cash. And the conservative movement has organizations like TPUSA that are capable of coming together to pull it off.
If Republicans want to hold onto Congress and give Trump a runway for his final two years, then their first priority for the coming fall should be to bring the circus back to town.
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