If you were tuning into American politics for the first time to watch this week’s GOP convention, you’d be excused for your confusion over how the Republican Party proposes to run the country. There is no official platform. The planks seem constructed out of personality and feelings, not policy or details. During his three-plus years in office, its leader, President Donald Trump, has erased any lingering doubts that the Republican Party is functioning as more than an appendage of the Trump identity, and that it might be beholden to his brand of gut-driven politics for years.

In accepting this reality, Republicans may have made a deal that could give them another four years in the White House, but will set them back decades. After all, Trump won’t be around forever to marshal his supporters’ votes with the flair of a reality show star, and a second-term Trump will have nothing to lose in thrashing norms and institutions the GOP has backed for generations. The party that lionized Ronald Reagan’s demand that Moscow “tear down this wall” in Berlin is now silent when Vladimir Putin’s chief rival is poisoned.

Trump takes the stage tonight to close out what has been a week of pandemic-changed staging. But few of the talking points were altered to meet the moment. Shows of empathy for a country that surpassed 180,000 COVID-19 deaths mid-convention were so rare they were newsworthy. Instead, the speakers painted a picture of a Republican Party that is hostile to minorities moving into the suburbs, proudly embraces isolationism and nationalism, and nostalgic for days of yesteryear.