Guess Who’s Not Coming to Milwaukee? Bush, Quayle, Pence, Cheney or Romney

There is a lot to be learned about today’s Republican Party from who is planning to skip the party’s nominating convention.

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Former President Donald J. Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence, is not expected to appear at the R.N.C. in Milwaukee this week.

For anyone looking for proof of the transformation of the Republican Party since Donald J. Trump was elected president in 2016, look no further than who is not attending the Republican nominating convention this week.

The men and women who were once the face of the Republican establishment — among them a former president, two vice presidents and the most recent presidential nominee not named Trump — are skipping the event, an acknowledgment of the extent to which the party has moved on from the days when it was known as the party of Ronald Reagan.

In many ways, their absence is hardly a surprise and underlines a transformation that has been clear for at least five years, if not longer. But because of the constrained nature of the Republican convention in 2020, held as the nation struggled with the Covid pandemic, this convention will be the first that provides see-it-before-your-eyes evidence that this is indeed the Trump Republican Party.

“This is a real watershed and shows the degree to which Trump has had a victory march in the party culminating with the platform, which is entirely Trump’s platform,” said Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker and a supporter of Mr. Trump.

George W. Bush, the former president, does not plan to be there. “He’s long since out of that game,” Freddy Ford, his spokesman, said of Mr. Bush, who is 78, Mr. Trump’s age, and who left the White House in 2008. “He has not attended a convention since he was a candidate.”

Neither will Dan Quayle, who served as vice president under Mr. Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, who died in 2018. Dick Cheney, the vice president under the younger Mr. Bush, is skipping the event, as is Liz Cheney, his daughter, a former member of Congress — and one of the leading Republican critics of Mr. Trump.

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