Now that some time has passed since the Texas Republican Party Convention, copies of the platform have finally become available. It may be the longest party platform ever, and while it does have some good parts, it also has some glaring flaws when compared to past platforms of the Republican Party and to the ideals which I'd like to see the party continuing to embody today. It seems to be the result of a process where no restraint was applied at all and space was given to issues based on how loudly their advocates could shout. As a result it's a mishmash of every kind of extreme position representing every outspoken faction in the party.
As those who've been reading my articles are aware, I was a delegate to the Texas GOP Convention. Resolutions which eventually made it into the platform were one of my special interests. I had a lot of success at my precinct and district conventions presenting arguments against certain proposed resolutions which I thought were intolerant and reflected badly on the party. In particular, I was able to stop dead two proposed resolutions, one condemning homosexuality and one opposing any form of gay unions. But the way the resolution process works, resolutions from all the districts come to the state convention through the Resolutions Committee, and even though a resolution is defeated in one district, it's quite likely to show up again from another district. Activist groups circulate resolutions they like to their agents all over the state, so the same resolution may get sent to the convention for consideration by dozens of different districts. So my success in SD25 meant relatively little in the face of all the other districts contributing to the process. Of course, all of this then gets sent on to the national Republican convention where all the state platforms are drawn on to create a national platform.
The primary characteristic of the 2008 Texas Republican Party Platform is that it's insanely long. In small print it fills 25 pages, with over 250 separate resolutions included in it. It's as if they took every district convention, edited out only the duplicate resolutions, and mashed it all together into one huge and ridiculous compendium of the trivial and bizarre. As a result, I can't even begin to address the content of the platform in a single article, so this is the first in what will probably be a three part series.
In the formation of the platform, a number of special interest groups were competing to get their particular agendas represented as heavily as possible. These included the religious right, nationalistic warhawks, libertarian leaning republicans and through the Ron Paul movement, a significant number of paranoid John Birch Society fanatics. My hope was that most of the crazier and more extreme ideas of all of these groups would get weeded out, but because the bar for inclusion was set so low, a surprising number of really unappealing ideas made it into the platform. In an ideal world the platform would represent primarily the views that all elements of the party hold in common, but as a result of what I can only conclude was laziness or fear on the part of the Resolutions Committee, the platform instead tries to represent every possible viewpoint to some extent and the result isn't pretty.
Article comments
1 - Pablo
Do people actually read this Dave? I sure don't.
2 - Dave Nalle
Nice to see you found it anyway, Pablito. I know politics isn't really your thing, but for some of us looking at a document like this is a way of understanding where the Republican Party has gone astray and what problems we need to address.
Dave
3 - Pablo
[Edited]
Dave,
The republican party went astray? Ya dont say. I would have to agree, since um about the days of ole Abe, however Ike had one brief shining moment in his warning about the military industrial complex. Good luck with the good ole boys Davey. :)
4 - Pablo
Well I broke down and looked at your article Dave, I usually do sooner or later. I particularly liked the paragraphs under the "Preserving American Freedom" header.
You sure got your work cut out for ya. Sounds to me like those good ole boys down there are the cream of the crop, of the endearing right wing that I so much adore.
Good luck!
5 - Ruvy
Having been a delegate at numerous precinct caucuses and district conventions at various levels in Minnesota's DFL, I know that party platforms are worth little more than toilet paper. That didn't stop me from keeping my ears open for the inevitable pro-"Palestine" shit that got raised at various conventions and doing what I could to stop them. I usually didn't make it to the state convention (inevitably held in out of the way places like Moorhead or Eveleth), so once it got out of my district, I was usually politicked out.
A state party platform doesn't really matter, Dave. Maybe, in Israel it does, but not in the States. The only thing that really matters in any state government is the receipts coming in from sales taxes, income taxes, etc. And each government has its own mix of how the money comes in. All the rest is well, nice, if you know what I mean.
Unfortunately, being a policy wonk is primarily being a power wonk. The rest is just garbage.
6 - David
"One is the strongest statement possible on abortion, declaring that life begins at fertilization."
So how long 'til men are prosecuted for masturbating?
7 - Lee Richards
Thoughtful and interesting article, Dave.
I imagine a lot of the same things are happening in most state Republican meetings. Can a party so divided(and with so many weird people making nutty demands)long endure? Or will internal pressures(and election wipe-outs)make it blow apart like Vesuvius?
One of the best things for the Republican Party in the last few decades was the election of Reagan, re-energizing it and bringing a lot of new people in. It was also one of the worst things for the Party; Reagan encouraged the religious right and lunatic fringe to get involved as Republican insiders, taking the party into strange directions.
Bush(an anti-conservative if there ever was one) has succeeded in making "Republican" as much of a political epithet as "liberal" used to be, in the minds of many people.
***
Ruvy, money isn't all that matters in state government. When extremists such as the religious right take control, freedom is threatened or curtailed and life is much more unpleasant under their repressive attitudes and mandates. (They sometimes re-write state constitutions, change school curricula, re-district, refuse to compromise to get things done, preach rather than dialogue, etc.)
8 - Dave Nalle
Don't worry, Pablo. The Ron Paul faction gets some of its points in later in the platform.
Ruvy. I agree that the platform doesn't matter much as a document of policy. However, as a statement of the beliefs and a sign of the degree of influence of various factions within the party it's very significant. That's why it is worth reporting on.
Dave
9 - Ruvy
Richard you missed the last line of my comment to Dave - Unfortunately, being a policy wonk is primarily being a power wonk. The rest is just garbage. That deals with all that you were talking about. I've dealt with these lovelies too, the pro-life dictator types who tried to take over the DFL club I belonged to. They eventually all found happy homes in the Republican Party, which is where would-be fascists belong.
10 - Randy Dixon
I'm a Ron Paul Republican and a Texas State delegate and often disagree with your criticisms of Dr. Paul's policies but on this post we are in total agreement.
11 - Cannonshop
#7
Lee, the same can be accurately said of the Democratic party. Depending on the level of and percentage of severe left-or-right at the state level, you can have a dictatorship of either Left, OR Right. Here in Washington State, for instance, the Democratic Party machine is effectively immune to change, and is rarely if ever restrained by the wording of the State's constitution. They don't even have to worry that much about state-wide elections, having districts that will generate fictional ballots that can be counted as real with total impunity, while their lickspittles in the state Supreme Court will rule against any initiative or ballot measure that does not please their leadership. They control the counters of the ballots, ergo, they control the outcome of elections, and there is NO serious or effective oversight. only the pretense of an election remains, and that's not even tried at real hard-the two dominant counties in the state use mail-in ballots, without any means of confirming if the voter whose ballot that is, even EXISTS as more than a signature forged on a registration form.
12 - Dave Nalle
Even within a state you can have multiple areas of dictatorial control. While Texas is certainly dominated by the GOP, the City of Austin is just as firmly dominated by dictatorial leftists.
DAave