A Republican Platform that Anyone Can Read

VIA SBINSIDER NEWS\ANALYSIS |July 14th, 2024

Usually, party platforms run hundreds of pages long and the hard-core activists on the platform committee are the mechanics of the documents who fight over every comma and subheader. Party nominees inject their operatives into the process (with veto power) to make sure nothing that will put off a huge portion of the voters. After all the sturm and drang the assembled convention delegates routinely pass the presented document on a voice vote as there is a TV schedule to be met. (TV coverage being the most important aspect to the convention.)

One exception to this well-scripted process was in 1972 and the Democratic convention where its nominee, Senator George McGovern, was forced to give the acceptance speech at 3AM because the platform committee ran off the rails and bumped the schedule. It was another bad look for a campaign that was doomed.

In any case, beyond the activists and the media, no sane person reads any of the platforms and it is generally accepted that whoever is elected, the principles may followed by the details are subject to the prevailing political winds by the time actually governing is undertaken.

This year the GOP took a different tack and pared the process and the resulting platform document to a scant 16 pages! More to the point, the document is readable to the voter who likely only gets interested in the final two weeks of the campaign.  It is also remarkable in the first page lists the 20 key points contained therein with more details in the remaining pages. 

With a $33 trillion dollar debt hanging over the country, an inexplicably open southern border policy and persistent inflation casual voters are likely to wonder which party is serious about those problems.

Next week the GOP gathers in Milwaukee for their convention and Trump’s pick for Vice-President-which is the only made for TV moment. The Democrats huddle-up in Chicago in August, the 19th. Perhaps Biden will hand the nomination to Harris at that moment-making for must see TV, of course.