For the first time in eight years, the Republican Party has a platform. It’s not written in Sharpie, but it might as well be.
It’s all in caps, like they’re shouting at us. The content and the form are high-schoolish. It reads as though someone who lacks substance tried to write bumper stickers or poster slogans that sound good but are empty—no one, Republican or Democrat, is going to “seal” the border or “stop” inflation. It’s that emptiness, ending with “Unite our country by bringing it to new and record levels of success,” that captures the hollow spirit of this new Republican platform. It’s not that platforms are ever highly substantive, but this one hits new lows. Perhaps what’s absent is as telling as what’s in there: no mention of abortion or marriage equality, two issues where the well-known GOP position is at odds with public sentiment. Trump recently bragged about undoing Roe and abortion rights, and now he tries to back away from that signature accomplishment. The platform is what they’ll show people. But Project 2025 is the substance of what the new administration will look like. It includes a national abortion ban—forget about states’ rights. It includes policies that would increase taxes for middle class Americans, weaken workers’ right to overtime pay, and raise the retirement age for Social Security. It’s those unpopular parts of Project 2025 that are absent from or contradicted by the Republican platform, the part they show the public. But Project 2025 is squarely Trump’s, written by his people. Eighty-one percent of them held formal roles connected to the Trump presidency. The coming election is the perfect storm for anyone interested in sinking democracy. On the one hand, there is the Republican Party, now completely and firmly in thrall to a would-be dictator who serves his own self-interest and doesn’t care about the people who make up his “base,” and for whom he pretends to be fighting for. “THEY’RE NOT AFTER ME, THEY’RE AFTER YOU…I’M JUST STANDING IN THE WAY!” Trump rants in bold on his website. On the other hand, the Democratic Party is still in something of a meltdown, not entirely without reason, after Joe Biden stumbled through his debate performance, leading to a fierce conversation about whether he’s capable of leading the country for the next four years. That’s a conversation that might have been better had it happened at the outset of the campaign season before Biden locked up the delegates necessary for the nomination. But that did not happen. So now, here we are, with democracy hanging in the balance. We are living squarely at the intersection of law and politics, and it is not a comfortable place to be. The Lincoln Project is out with a new ad, an effort to demonstrate as though it’s a news report what it would mean to have Donald Trump back in office, organized under the principles of Project 2025 and backed by a Supreme Court that has decreed none of his official acts are crimes. It’s four minutes long, but it’s a must watch.
Here’s how it ends: “Ask yourself, what did you believe was impossible just eight years ago? … He’s counting on you to believe it won’t happen.” That’s an evergreen statement when it comes to Trump; whether it’s Project 2025 or anything else about his hoped-for second term in office, he is quite literally counting on Americans to believe it won’t happen. I know many of you will hear proof of this in your conversations with people who intend to vote for him. They won’t read Project 2025; they may not know what it is. They won’t read a lengthy analysis, maybe not even a short one. It comes down to conversations with trusted friends. So please take one or two key points that resonate with you from everything we’ve been reading and discussing and be prepared to make them at the right moment in those conversations. It might be the contradiction between the Republican Party’s platform and Project 2025. That implies a level of deceit that might make people question and dig deeper to take a look for themselves. It could be the promise that there will be no changes to Social Security on the one hand, while proposing to weaken it on the other. It seems likely at this point that Joe Biden will be the Democrat’s nominee. He says he’s staying in the race, and he has the votes. He also has, as University of Virginia political science Professor Larry Sabato puts it, the “high ground,” in the sense that he can’t be forced to leave the race. He has said he won’t.
I know the whole situation angers some of the people in the big tent that is the Democratic Party. The Democrats have never been a party that marches in lockstep. That is something that Republicans do. Its absence is both a strength and a weakness of the Democratic Party, but I suspect something that draws many Democrats is the lack of a mandatory dogma. Nonetheless, we live in a moment where we must find a way to keep the Republic. We are in the moment Benjamin Franklin envisioned more than 200 years ago, when, asked what form of government the Constitutional Convention had created, he responded, “a Republic, if you can keep it.” Just like America on the cusp of the Civil War, we are going to have to find a way to steer back towards democracy. Because we know what Trump will do. I prefer a political party that permits dissent and debate—the proverbial big tent—over one where disagreement with the dear leader leads to marginalization and forced expulsion. I prefer a country where the First Amendment and a whole host of other rights many will take for granted until it’s too late stay in place. Also, and this is putting it mildly, I’d prefer to see Joe Biden appointing new judges and justices rather than Donald Trump.
The Supreme Court—including three members Trump appointed and two who, by virtue of conflicts of interest due to work undertaken and/or views expressed by their wives, would have recused had they been judges on any other federal court—has now anointed him with near total immunity from criminal prosecution for any official acts he undertakes. The opinion in Trump v. U.S. sweeps so broadly when describing potential official acts that he can claim protection for virtually anything he does. Any effort to hold him accountable would be tied up in court for years. Next Monday Republicans will gather in Milwaukee. They will vote on their platform and, presumably, Donald Trump will emerge as their nominee to be president. It will be a dark moment in our country’s history. We live in the time of the perfect storm. In less than four months, we’ll be deciding the future of the United States. Whatever your tolerance is for the news and for staying engaged in this moment, try to engage in civil discourse wherever you find the opportunity to do so. Just like those of us who write postcards to voters in other states know that they influence people’s decisions about whether to vote, our conversations—the casual ones in grocery stores, in places of worship, or over coffee or a beer, can have a strong impact too. And it’s the part we can do ahead of November, which is to say we must do it. We’re in this together, Joyce You're currently a free subscriber to Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance . For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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Tuesday, July 9, 2024
Trump's Party Issues a Platform
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