After not even bothering to do one in 2020, the 2024 GOP platform has been released, and folks are reacting.
Read it for yourself here:
2024 GOP Platform
Dedicated to the “To the Forgotten Men and Women of America,” the Republican Party’s 2024 platform reads like the transcript of a Trump rally speech.
The Republican National Committee’s Platform Committee adopted former President Donald Trump’s platform, a document that leans into Trump’s preferred “America First” stances and steers away from traditional GOP social issues.
The platform starts with 20 promises, largely pulling from the tag lines of the former president, including “STOP THE MIGRANT INVASION” and the simplistic “END INFLATION.” Trump’s campaign sought to pare down the party platform.
More recently, Trump has made sure to try to distance himself from the controversial (and lengthy) Project 2025 policy document put together by some of his allies.
Notably, the promises don’t mention anything about abortion, as Trump attempts to de-emphasize the issue and appeal to swing voters. In the entire platform, the word appears just once, in a statement about the party’s dedication to protecting “the issue of life.” It reads: “We will oppose Late Term Abortion.”
After appointing the Supreme Court justices who helped overturn the constitutional right to abortion, he’s said the issue should now be up to states.
Other social issues appear more frequently, including promises related to limiting federal funding for schools teaching so-called Critical Race Theory and keeping “men out of women’s sports.”
In true Soviet style, the platform was drafted by Trump aides then delivered to the delegates without any amendment or edits allowed. Trump representatives photographed the delegates as they voted and later reported that it was approved
The delegates obediently rubber stamped it in what one representative called “euphoric consensus”.Report
Evangelicals in disarray! If you enjoy schadenfreude at the expense of pro-lifers, you’ll be tickled pink at this footage.
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Why do they need pro-life language? They won. Roe was overturned.Report
An interesting question.
Perhaps she’s engaging in 14-dimensional chess.
Perhaps she’s a nevertrumper hoping to undermine Trump.
Perhaps she’s a fanatic and wants a national policy on abortion instead of a post-Roe “return it to the states” policy.
You’d think that there’d have been more of a euphoric consensus.Report
“Come the Trump revolution, you will do as you’re damn well told.”Report
My first thought, this is a pretty garbage document. The text doesn’t follow its implicit outline. I’ve read platforms before, but I doubt that the authors of this document have. There’s a lot of boilerplate language (such as the pro-life stand) that isn’t even included, language that’s been in previous platforms and animates the party more than the policies in this document do.Report
This isn’t a platform. It’s Fox New programming notes. The parts that aren’t vague meaningless phrases are false.
And no one, no one thinks abortion is going to be ignored.Report
B-but it was dictated by the Dear Leader Himself!!
Did you not notice that it is in ALL CAPS, BY FAR!!Report
The abortion “plank” is framed as though Dobbs was some sort of restoration of personal liberties and is framed in terms of people voting about abortion and thus deciding for themselves what to think and do about the issue.
24 out of the 50 states do not have any sort of citizen initiative. This includes many the states with the most restrictive laws about abortion out there, including Texas and almost all of the Deep South. So the idea of “people voting” sounds good but doesn’t stand up to a lot of scrutiny. At best, the people can vote on the issue indirectly by electing pro-life or pro-choice state legislators, assuming their state legislative districts are not gerrymandered into uncompetititveness and that there aren’t other ballot access issues.
And then there’s the framing of Dobbs as somehow restoring a personal liberty. Dobbs restored a power to a state. I’ve said it before and I still think this is the right framing for U.S. law: governmental powers end where individual rights begin. Q: What thing can an individual do after Dobbs that they could not do before it? A: ….
No, people are now less able to to a thing (get abortions) than they were before, because Dobbs enlarged state powers as compared to Roe/Casey, such that a state now has the power to restrict first-trimester abortions up to and in some cases including restricting them 100%.
Maybe you think that’s the right result, maybe (like the majority of Americans, or like me) you think it’s a bad result, but either way, Dobbs didn’t expand individual liberty. It expanded state power.Report
A: ideally, survive the womb. But also, to affect policy.Report