Tag Archives: Platform

News

Republican platform stays pro-marriage, pledges to defund Planned Parenthood

1 Comment
Ted and Heidi Cruz have a plan to simplify the tax code
There’s always 2020 to run a conservative Republican candidate for President

Although it is a mistake to run a lifelong Democrat clown as the Republican nominee for President, at least the party platform of the Republican Party as a whole is conservative on social issues.

The Daily Signal reports:

A dramatic effort to change the GOP’s stance on LGBT issues ended with a whimper Monday as the Republican National Convention kicked off officially.

The document, adopted Monday on the floor of Quicken Loans Arena, codifies the traditional definition of marriage and denounces the administration’s school bathroom directive.

“It’s the most conservative platform we’ve ever adopted,” Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., platform committee co-chair, told The Daily Signal. “It’s absolutely pro-marriage. It’s a wonderful platform to unite all Republicans and all Americans.”

Last week, it wasn’t clear if the platform would be agreed to at all.

Delegates and operatives associated with American Unity Fund, an LGBT lobbying organization bankrolled by billionaire Paul Singer, mounted an operation to completely scrap the party’s platform supporting traditional marriage in favor of a shorter document that didn’t include any language about marriage.

The plan hinged on a parliamentary measure known as a minority report. It would trigger a messy debate on the floor of the convention if just 28 of the 112 delegates signed onto the measure.

Last Wednesday the minority report had 37 signatures, CNN reported.

But four of those delegates told The Daily Signal that they were lied to about what they were signing. They thought they were signing a short statement of principle authored by Utah delegate Boyd Matheson.

“When we found out about it, we alerted the people who signed it that the one page ‘statement of principle’ didn’t contain support for traditional marriage and family values,” Indiana delegate Jim Bopp told The Daily Signal.

By the time the convention convened Monday, more than half of the 37 delegates who had signed the minority report removed their names, delegates Bopp, Matheson, and Ben Marchi told The Daily Signal. The loss of signatures killed the initiative.

[…]Marchi, who described the minority report tactic as “the filthiest thing I’ve ever seen in politics,” said the episode should put conservatives on alert.

Not only is the party platform still pro-marriage, (and therefore pro-child), but the party platform is the most pro-life ever.

March for Life reports:

Today the Republican National Convention voted to pass the most detailed pro-life Platform ever – in direct sharp contrast to the draft Democratic Platform which is the most pro-abortion Platform ever.  On the ground in Cleveland to assist the pro-life delegates was March for Life Action Vice President Tom McClusky.

[…]“The delegates deserve a lot of credit for creating this document which, in great detail, explains what the pro-life movement is for and just how radical the pro-abortion position is,” said March for Life Action Vice President Tom McClusky.  “For the first time ever the Republican Platform calls out abortion giant Planned Parenthood by name and says tax dollars should not go to subsidize the death industry.” In addition support for bans on dilation and extraction abortions as well as bans on sex selection and abortions based on disability are, for the first time, in the Platform.

Language defending the conscience rights of individuals and institutions was included as well, fitting after the successful vote on the Conscience Protection Act in the U.S. House of Representatives.  In addition, the Republican Platform calls for protection against attacks on the Hyde Amendment.  Since the 1970’s the Hyde amendment has been the firewall preventing certain tax dollars being used to pay for abortions.

I know that a lot of people who claim to be pro-marriage and pro-life vote for the Democrat party because they are dependent on the government for handouts. But the truth is that if a person is consistently pro-marriage and pro-life, then they ought to be a Republican. I just assume that when someone tells me that they are a Democrat, that they are anti-marriage and pro-abortion. If you’re pro-marriage and pro-life, then you vote Republican. Period.

News

Charles Krauthammer: what the GOP should do if they retake the Senate

2 Comments

From National Review, a follow-up to my post yesterday about the midterm election projection.

Excerpt:

The Democratic line is that the Republican House does nothing but block and oppose. In fact, it has passed hundreds of bills, only to have them die upon reaching the desk of Senate majority leader Harry Reid. He has rendered the Senate inert by simply ensuring that any bill that might present a politically difficult vote for his Democratic colleagues never comes to the floor.

Winning control of the Senate would allow Republicans to pass a whole range of measures now being held up by Reid, often at the behest of the White House. Make it a major reform agenda. The centerpiece might be tax reform, both corporate and individual. It is needed, popular, and doable. Then go for the low-hanging fruit enjoying wide bipartisan support, such as the Keystone XL pipeline and natural-gas exports, especially to Eastern Europe. One could then add border security, energy deregulation, and health-care reform that repeals the more onerous Obamacare mandates.

If the president signs any of it, good. If he vetoes, it will be clarifying. Who then will be the Party of No? The vetoed legislation would become the framework for a 2016 GOP platform. Let the debate begin.

The risk-averse will say: Why take chances? Why not just run against the Obama legacy in 2016?

The GOP should and will do that. What has happened to economic growth, social cohesion, and America’s standing abroad will be a significant drag on Democrats. But it could very well not be enough.

[…]Memo to the GOP: Win the Senate, then enact an agenda and dare the president to veto it. Show the country what you stand for. Then take it to the nation in 2016.

So, if the GOP takes the House and Senate, they can proceed to pass every single bill that makes sense to the American people and then have Obama veto each one. Then they can run on those vetoed bills in 2016. Obama is a left-wing radical, so this is exactly who we want to represent the Democrat party in such an operation. Republicans can say “We wanted THIS and the Democrat in charge said no”. That’s one way of working around the liberal media. Now is the time to debate all the bills that they will want to pass should the GOP win the Presidency in 2016.

Commentary

George Will: Rick Santorum connects with the working class

Leave a comment

From the liberal Washington Post, a column by moderate conservative George Will.

Excerpt:

On Sept. 26, 1996, the Senate was debating whether to ban partial-birth abortion, the procedure whereby the baby to be killed is almost delivered, feet first, until only a few inches of its skull remain in the birth canal, and then the skull is punctured, emptied and collapsed. Santorum asked two pro-choice senators opposed to the ban, Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), this: Suppose the baby slips out of the birth canal before it can be killed. Should killing it even then be a permissible choice? Neither senator would say no.

On Oct. 20, 1999, during another such debate, Santorum had a colloquy with pro-choice Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.):

Santorum: “You agree that, once the child is born, separated from the mother, that that child is protected by the Constitution and cannot be killed. Do you agree with that?”

Boxer: “I think that when you bring your baby home . . . .”

Santorum is not, however, a one-dimensional social conservative. He was Senate floor manager of the most important domestic legislation since the 1960s, the 1996 welfare reform. This is intensely pertinent 15 years later, as the welfare state buckles beneath the weight of unsustainable entitlement programs: Welfare reform repealed a lifetime entitlement under Aid to Families with Dependent Children, a provision of the 1935 Social Security Act, and empowered states to experiment with new weaves of the safety net.

White voters without college education — economically anxious and culturally conservative — were called “Reagan Democrats” when they were considered only seasonal Republicans because of Ronald Reagan. Today they are called the Republican base.

Who is more apt to energize them: Santorum, who is from them, or Romney, who is desperately seeking enthusiasm?

Romney recently gave a speech with a theme worthy of a national election, contrasting a “merit-based” or “opportunity” society with Barack Obama’s promotion of an “entitlement society,” which Romney termed “a fundamental corruption of the American spirit”: “Once we thought ‘entitlement’ meant that Americans were entitled to the privilege of trying to succeed. . . . But today the new entitlement battle is over the size of the check you get from Washington. . . . And the only people who truly enjoy any real rewards are those who do the redistributing — the government.”

Romney discerns the philosophic chasm separating those who embrace and those who reject progressivism’s objective, which is to weave a web of dependency, increasingly entangling individuals and industries in government supervision.

Santorum exemplifies a conservative aspiration born about the time he was born in 1958. Frank Meyer, a founding editor of William F. Buckley’s National Review in 1955, postulated the possibility, and necessity, of “fusionism,” a union of social conservatives and those of a more libertarian, free-market bent.

Please make sure you watch Rick Santorum’s speech in Iowa, or read the transcript. The speech was very good, and it’s also very interesting.

In a new national poll from today (Thursday), Santorum now trails Romney nationally 29%-21%.  Gingrich is third with 16%. According to another poll, Santorum is now running third in liberal New Hampshire.

By the way, I am completely fine with a Gingrich/Santorum ticket. But I would prefer a Santorum/Gingrich ticket, if I can get it. Those are the two great conservative communicators in this Republican primary. Both candidates are from the working class, and both are men with bold ideas.