Kersplatform
Because I left the GOP in 2016, people assume that it was over Donald Trump. I actually left months before he secured the nomination. My process had been underway for some time, but the clown who burst the tiny car was my effort to put a proposal to a vote for the Texas GOP platform.
This past weekend at their biennial convention, the Texas GOP passed a new version of their platform. A political platform should be a set of policy proposals to advertise to potential voters what will be attempted if its authors gain or retain power. There is a place for pronouncements of general principles after debate and an articulation of one’s justification - a manifesto. This communal declaration of faith without argument or proposal is neither platform nor manifesto; it is a creed.
The three most newsworthy parts of the new 40-page document are the declaration that Joe Biden was illegitimately elected, that homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice, and that life begins at fertilization. Below are the relevant parts.
Election 2020:
Note that it is only the five states and their presidential results, not the gain in congressional seats that is an issue for them.
Homosexuality:
“Choice” and “regardless of state of origin” are critical here.
Life Beginning at Fertilization:
Regardless of ‘ parental rights’ a specific worldview is all well and good to teach after all.
I’m including 218 as an example of how QAnon-type conspiracy language has started finding its way into mainstream party documents. More on this later.
I am not really interested in arguing these points or the sincerity of the folks advancing them, just explaining the process for how these became part of the official document of the biggest Republican Party. For example - and relevant to recent news - I don’t know if life begins at fertilization. Neither do you. As I have written before, this is a question not of science but faith.1
Gaffes by consensus.
It is easy to dismiss these GOP platform updates as wacky. Sometimes they are so inartfully drafted that hilarity ensues. In 2016, poor grammar had the Texas GOP claiming that being gay was what God commanded, the founders accepted, and most Texans were:
“Homosexuality is a chosen behavior that is contrary to the fundamental unchanging truths that has been ordained by God in the Bible, recognized by our nation’s founders, and shared by the majority of Texans.”
The National GOP chose in 2020 to just pledge support and retain their 2016 platform. Of course, since they did not adopt a plan at all, morsels that used to refer to Obama now referred to Trump:
“The President has been regulating to death a free market economy that he does not like and does not understand.”
The President has refused to defend or enforce laws he does not like, used executive orders to enact national policies in areas constitutionally reserved solely to Congress, made unconstitutional “recess” appointments to Senate-confirmed positions, directed regulatory agencies to overstep their statutory authority, and failed to consult Congress regarding military action overseas. He has changed what John Adams called “a government of laws and not of men” into just the opposite.
The current President and his allies on Capitol Hill have used those agencies as a super- legislature, disregarding the separation of powers, to declare as law what they could not push through the Congress.
Such silliness is worth mockery, but it runs the risk that New Yorker writers and smug coastals on a Trumpland safari will miss the substantive changes showing where the party is moving. Critically for what came four and six years later, in 2016 the Manafort-led Trump campaign changed one thing in the platform: withholding promises of aid for Ukraine against the then-ongoing Russian invasion.
The Resolution Process
These are more than fringe documents from hyperactive grassroots-voters whose social lives center on their local chapter of the party. There is a lengthy process for these proposals to reach a vote on the convention floor with multiple layers of linguistic tweaking and subjective editing by party stalwarts.
Upon finishing law school in 2012, I returned home to work at the local DA’s office. Navarro County was and is entirely run by Republicans.2 I was elected by the local party to be a precinct chair for my neighborhood. This allowed me to preside over the precinct convention, held in the voting place after the night of the primary. In Texas, this is in the February of even-numbered years. At these conventions, anyone eligible can present a proposal to modify the platform. If it is passed, that proposal gets sent on to the county level convention to be voted on. If passed there, it is submitted to the state convention. These are the proposals that have been incorporated into the platform.
I drafted up a proposal to remove the anti-gay language from the platform and prepared to argue to my neighbors that it was time to make this change. At the first Precinct Convention I presided over, in February 2014, no one else showed up. The polite Mormons in whose gymnasium the voting was held looked on in confusion as I gaveled the meeting to order as interim convention chair, elected myself convention chair and county convention delegate, recognized myself for consideration of a proposal, asked myself if there was debate, and—seeing none—voted unanimously to present the proposal to the county convention. Did I need to go through all of that? No. But I did not want them to have a procedural excuse to preclude me from making my argument to the county and at least making a record.
The proposal was not radical. In my justifications, I focused on the changing opinions among young people and the struggles to bring young people to the party. I wasn’t proposing an endorsement by the local GOP on gay-rights issues, just silence. This position is more in line with the small-government conservatism they profess and I prefer.
I did not expect it to pass. I did expect that it would be debated and put to a vote. Nevertheless, it was not brought up in the 2014 County Convention. Upon inquiry, I was informed that ‘the Resolutions Committee had considered it.’
The Resolutions Committee condenses and clarifies the proposals coming from the precincts - if similar resolutions on the same issue are submitted, they are supposed to pick the clearest wording and put it forward.
I repeated the process in 2016, updating the proposal with two more years of data and the recognition of same-sex marriage in the Obergefell decision.3 This time, there were actually voters who were at the Precinct convention, but I was again elected chair and delegate. Again the proposal passed unanimously.
But it was not brought to a vote at the county convention in 2016. The convention was an all day Saturday affair in May held in the back of the abandoned, cricket-infested mall that served as our county courthouse while the old one was being ‘restored.’ It was all a bit on-the-nose. The Resolutions Committee struck again. For mine, they told me that it was “against the spirit of the party” and so couldn’t be presented.
Things that were brought to a vote included declaring climate change a Chinese hoax, the rainbow flag declared to be an anti-christian symbol, and AIPAC being declared a terrorist organization. Most of the proposals were garbled in syntax and spelling. Yet mine - hardly extreme - was not even presented for a debate or vote.
Calvinball - when you make up the rules as you go - is deeply unconservative. This was while McConnell was moving the rules around on Merrick Garland. I realized that this procedural free jazz was at all levels of the party. I am a process guy, so I was out.
That was it for me. It is one thing to shrug at the ingrates and crooks in Washington. It is another to see the cravenness at the local level. At that point, finally, I abandoned my membership in the GOP and my lifelong political ambitions. If internal dissent is silenced, there is no point being inside.
How seriously should we take this GOP platform?
What this means, however, is that there are several filters for these platform proposals. If they are too extreme, they will be weeded out by the Resolutions Committee. This is not a slate with tradeoffs, like a piece of legislation having enough pet projects or compromises so it can pass. This is a line-by-line vote on each item.
For as much hype that the Green New Deal has been for FOX News, this platform represents far more of a consensus of the leadership and rank-and-file members of the GOP that the climate template sketch does. Imagine your Freedom Caucus, Grovers Norquist, or the Tea Party rather than a Build Back Better or Obamacare.
If you consider the Green New Deal as being an roughly accurate description of the direction of Democratic leadership and voters, you must take the GOP platform both literally and seriously.
They have laid out their creed. This is what they believe and - importantly - what they expect their members to believe. And when people tell you who they are, believe them.
In fact, until recent jurisprudence, I thought that there would be an interesting claim for an Establishment Clause violation.
Though that wasn’t until 2008. I wonder what changed.
Back in my day, conservatives liked stare decisis.