In Dallas this week, the Republican National Convention opened not with a unified chorus but with a visible fracture — two senior GOP voices publicly disagreeing over whether Donald Trump's economic stewardship deserved defense or scrutiny. The clash between Rina Shah and Adolfo Franco, aired on Al Jazeera ahead of the 2026 midterms, revealed something conventions are designed to conceal: a party still unsettled about the story it wants to tell voters about its own record. In the long arc of American political life, such moments remind us that the hardest audiences any party must persuade are