TAMPA, Fla. — Florida Republicans say that they’re looking forward to the Republican National Convention that kicks off  Monday night. 

They see it as a way to recalibrate the political narrative that has allowed Joe Biden to maintain a consistent lead over President Donald Trump in the national polls for much of this year.

“I have full faith and confidence that the Republican National Committee and the convention planners have planned a really good convention that will enable the president to get his message out to everybody about what he wants to do with his second term,” says Charles Hart, the chairman of the Orange County Republican Party. “And more importantly – it will also be a response to some of the nonsense we’ve heard from the Democrats in the last few days.”

“It’s been really miserable,” adds Christian Ziegler, vice chair of the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) about watching parts of the Democratic National Convention last week. “I mean, it’s so tough to sit through this. It’s tough to give speeches in empty rooms, so I kind of feel for them a little bit. It’s even more difficult when you’re trying to promote a socialist agenda that wants to defund the police and open up the borders, and really kind of eliminate America as we know it now.”

The RNC won’t be completely virtual.

Ziegler is one of six officials from the RPOF who are representing the state’s 122 delegates as they convene in Charlotte on Monday to conduct official party business – including nominating Trump to lead the party for another four years.

The President is facing reelection while the country undergoes its worst public health crisis in a century, with tens of millions of Americans going on unemployment due to the pandemic. The aggregate of national polling as complied by RealClearPolitics shows Joe Biden leading the president by about 7 percentage points – a margin that has been consistent for much of the year.

Yet polls also show that President Trump ranks higher than Joe Biden when it comes to the economy, prompting Florida GOP leaders to say that the president just needs to remind the public how well the economy was doing under his watch before the coronavirus attacked the country this winter.

“He’s going to go back how we had the best economy in the history of our country,” says Republican Party of Florida Chairman Joe Gruters. “And how after we’ve completed with this crisis, how we’ll get right back there. He’s the individual who can do it. He’s already done that once.”

“President Trump has made more promises than any other candidate I believe in the history of this country. And at the same time, he’s kept more of those promises than any other president in the history of this country,” says Mark Cross, the Chairman of the Osceola County Republican Party, citing the website promiseskept.com.

At a MAGA Meet-Up in Tampa late last week, state legislative leaders trotted out some of the themes that will likely be repeated throughout the convention.

“So what does it mean in a Biden America, which means the ultra-liberal wing of the Democratic Party is going to be in charge?” asked incoming Florida Senate President Wilton Simpson. He responded to his own question by talking about the country dealing with higher taxes, a Green New Deal, and plans to “defund the police” – an issue that Republicans have seized upon this summer, even though Biden has said he does not support that idea.

“This is one of the most radical, dangerous, disgusting frankly policy proposals I’ve ever seen – not just in any individual candidate – but this entire political party is embracing this message across the country,” says Ziegler.

While Republicans noted that the Democrats didn’t touch upon the protests that have led to a call in some American cities to reduce funding for local law enforcement at their convention, incoming Florida Speaker of the House Chris Sprowls says they didn’t need to do talk about it – because in some cities, they’re actually doing that.

“Actions speak louder than words, and the reality is the actions of the Democratic Party – that ‘we want to dismantle the police, we want to in some cases replace the police altogether but at the minimum we want to defund the police’ - is unacceptable and Floridians don’t want any part of it,” he says.

Among the Floridians who will address the RNC this week include Congressman Matt Gaetz, former Attorney General Pam Bondi, Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nunez, and Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was killed in the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018.

In a bit of counterprograming, the Democratic National Committee communications team says they will convene a “War Room” that will hold daily video press briefings this week with surrogates such as Florida Congresswoman Val Demings, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, among others.