In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the GOP decided to eschew putting forth an updated policy platform and to instead adopt the 2016 platform verbatim. The party leaders felt that it wouldn’t be write to put forth a new platform when they couldn’t responsibly hold an in person convention that year. Though it got on my nerves to not be able to read an updated platform, you can’t really fault them for this. It was the responsible move and allowed them to save themselves from the embarrassment of all of us doing our best to figure out how to use Zoom, especially for what would be an insanely large call.
In 2024, there was no such convenient excuse, and so they cobbled together a platform, released it a few days before their 2024 convention, and then approved it on the first day of said convention, the 15th of July, 2024.
I was actually really excited for them to put out their platform. It’s incredibly lame of me, but I like being able to read through exact, detailed thoughts. It’s why I find campaign websites so frustrating. There are so many broad statements on policy and philosophy and often not a lot of detail. One of the reasons I find the DSA a bit frustrating is that their policy platform is also lacking. So I was planning on reading it, writing a script, and recording a little video. Imagine my utter annoyance when this year’s platform was less than half the length of 2016’s. So I want to talk about it and in moments contrast it with the 2016 platform. And in doing so I hope to highlight some of the policies and showcase the growing lack of seriousness from the party. In other words, the 2024 Republican Platform proves why you should vote for the Democrats in 2024.
One - The Preamble and Bad Writing
I considered titling this section capitalism and getting everyone to think I’d be talking about the economy and taxes and then pull the rug out and clarify that I actually capitalizing letters. One of the first things that struck me reading the preamble was the constant, random capitalization. “Our Nation’s History” history should not be capitalized, nor should the “People” in “The American People.” Trade deals, borders, policies, greatness, historic economic growth, rampant crime, so on and so on. It is a constant typing quirk that acts as if capitalization is a stand-in for other typographic ways of providing emphasis such as boldface which is more appropriate in some of these instances. But you cannot have constant emphasis. On one hand, it grates the eye. On the second, it makes it seem as if you can’t write.
I want to ask: is that purposeful?
In the third paragraph, the preamble includes the all-caps, Former President Trump-style usage of “SERIOUS DECLINE.” Trump’s writing style is filled with this sort of thing. He loves capitalizing random things, shouting others. He speaks broadly and simply. So they’re imitating his writing style for their serious policy document. I think that calls into question the purpose of the platform. Is it to inform or is it to rile?
When I read the preamble, I don’t read the words of a serious party I severely disagree with. I read a performance that assumes its audience is a group of morons who can’t read if you don’t write in incredibly idiotic ways. This is not well-written. And that is on purpose. A quote. “For decades, our politicians sold our jobs and livelihoods to the highest bidders overseas with unfair Trade Deals and a blind faith in the siren song of globalism.” So let’s, for now, push past the dogwhistling of the siren song of globalism thing. The GOP obviously was part of those decades of politics they’re claiming were domineered by the enemy. The bad writing is an attempt to appeal to populism. Populism is the aesthetics of anger disguised as politics. Suddenly it becomes clear why the document is a lot shorter than 2016. Though it was a good way into becoming the party of Trump and demagoguery, it wasn’t yet entirely bought by it. Now…
It uses words like “magnificently.” Interesting for a supposedly serious document. Of course, that adverb comes in before discussing a “Migrant Invasion” aiming to “alter our Country.” It’s fear-mongering, because populism and its writing styles have the ultimate aim of establishing authoritarian nightmares.
“We will DRILL, BABY, DRILL.” Did a child write this?
I’m going to get to critiquing the policy soon, but I don’t think we should let slip how unprofessional this document is. Nor should we pretend that unprofessionalism isn’t a cynical performance. Populism bills itself as an us vs them, often the “regular folks” versus the “elites.” This platform is their condescending attempt at speaking to “regular folks.” Rather than write in an easily digestible way, they write as if they’re talking to a bunch of morons.
The preamble claims “the Republican Party must stand for Equal Treatment for All.” In a previous video I did where I looked at all of the GOP state platforms, I noted that many didn’t include nondiscrimination statements and some that did specifically opposed the inclusion of LGBT people in such statements and policies. So. Are they lying? Yes. They also claim that Donald Trump facing charges for his criminal actions threatens to destroy the country. It doesn’t.
A policy document, which can be a bitch long, uses the words, “and much more” to end a list. In a document. Meant to tell us all things they want to do.
The Preamble gives 20 “promises” they intend to keep. Yes, they’re in all capitals, none of them are hyperlinks or anything. “One: seal the border and stop the migrant invasion.” Seal is an odd word choice. We’ve seen the word “close” used throughout the years, but I haven’t really seen seal. Why that word? To me, seal conjures up the idea of nothing in, nothing out. I realize that’s an uncharitable reading, but a proper team of proper writers would have caught on to how easy it is to fearmonger over that specific word choice and they would have chosen a different one. Unless. They mean the uncharitable read.
As I was reading through the points, given the sort of document this is, I expected each of these bullet points to be their own section or subsection of the document going forward. 20 promises, 20 points to hit. Not really. So they’re all caps for no real reason. I do want to focus in on some more word choices though. Point eighteen claims they will “make our college campuses safe and patriotic again.” What does it mean to make a campus patriotic? To me, that sounds like compelled speech. Is that a crackdown on protests, student speech, or restrictions on what is allowed to be taught?
On twelve, they desire to make the military “the strongest and most powerful…” Those are the same thing. Bad writing.
Two - The Inflation Page
That’s right. I said page. As in one. Oh, but maybe they managed to fit it all in. No.
Their intro paragraph functions as a high school student’s twelfth grade research paper. Here’s my 5 point essay, the things I’m going to talk about, and my thesis statement.
Only a research paper is graded more harshly and probably has more effort put into it.
Point one. Unleash American Energy. “Under President Trump, the US became the Number One Producer of Oil and Natural Gas in the World.” According to Forbes, the US became the top producer of oil in the world in 2013. Who was president? Well. Obama. Thanks Obama - the article later goes on to point out that ultimately it was George Mitchell who’s responsible for this with the whole fracking thing, and this was pretty much bound to happen no matter who the president was. So cool, we’re starting off with a bit of a lie. And they follow it off with a lie by implication, implying that we are not currently the leading producer of oil and natural gas. According to Investing New Network, the US is currently the largest producer of natural gas.
Point number two promises to “rein in wasteful federal spending.” So you would think, in a policy document, you would list out some of the things you want to cut the budget for. Are there departments you would like to downsize? Projects you would like to pull out of? Programs you want to defund? What is it they want? Are they refusing to say because they’re an unserious party without any plans or because they know their specific goals would be unpopular if spelled out?
Point three promises to deregulate. What regulations do they want to get rid of? They don’t say. Because, again, this isn’t a serious policy document.
Point four aims to stop illegal immigration. This is a nitpick, but their next chapter is about the border. So for the sake of flow, a competent set of writers would have made this the final point. Because that gets an actual chapter, I won’t comment on it here.
Point five claims it will restore geopolitical stability by showing strength and that that would help end inflation or something. This is their final chapter so again, put a pin in it. Logically, then, you can make a case for mentioning this at the end of the chapter so we know we’ll see it later on. However, the next few chapters after the immigration go back to the economy. It’s poorly thought out.
Three - The Border
This chapter is half a page longer. I know! So much information. They change up their style a bit here. Their intro paragraph doesn’t lay out each and every single point they’re about to make. Why are we being inconsistent in our writing? Because we didn’t care! Yay!
In their first point about securing the border, the platform promises to send a lot of the fed to immigration. They also want to stick thousands of military members on the border. They don’t use the seal language here. Are we sealing it and putting such forces there to keep us in as well? Why did we use the word seal? They desire to “restore every Border Policy of the Trump administration” which sounds like recreating those detention centers filled with children that we terrorized.
Point two includes an unforgivable phrase in a policy document which is “and other Policies.” No! This is where you tell us what those are. Why are you keeping these ideas a secret from the people meant to be reading this and supporting you? What are you hiding? More importantly, this brief paragraph promises an insanely dangerous idea. “We will also invoke the Alien Enemies Act to remove all known or suspected gang members, drug dealers, or cartel members from the United States.” An article in Just Security points out that using that act in such a way wouldn’t fly because we’re not at war with Mexico and this a war time act. Invoking it this way would be clearly illegal. However, we know they don’t care about that. As Ebright writes in this article, it applies to any non-US citizen, so people here perfectly legally who just aren’t US citizens can be caught up in this act with no rights to argue against it, no trial, and no need for proof beyond that they’re from the place the President wants to send them too. The use of the word “suspected” in the platform gives the game away. This is a guilty you cannot prove your innocence piece of legislation. You can suspect anyone if you’re paranoid or racist enough. If you suspect one person, what’s stopping you from having suspicion of their entire family?
And that leads to their third point - the promise to begin the “largest deportation program in American history.” They mostly talk about sending back people who are here illegally, but i can’t help but think back to the implications of using the Alien Enemies Act and focus on the word “suspected.” How much of this deportation process will include legal immigrants that the administation simply wants gone?
Point 4, Strict Vetting. I’m somewhat impressed here that they seem to understand not all Marxists are communists or socialists. That’s a basic level of nuance they pretend not to have all the time. You know, the sort that leads them to call Biden a socialist when he’s very much not. Ask the DSA. But the GOP, at least rhetorically, is willing to call the entire left “socialists.” So then it isn’t hard to imagine that they’re implying anyone on the left will not be welcome in this country. They also specifically mention Christian hating. What does that mean? Does that mean actual hatred of Christians? Does that include people who were heavily victimized by the religion and hold a grudge they have no interest or means for acting against? When it says that they will “ensure that jihadists and jihadist sympathizers are not admitted,” what do they mean? Because of how sparse this embarrassment of a document is, we’re left to draw our own conclusions. Based on how the GOP has been talking since October 7, I would guess they would take any support for the Palestinian people to be “jihadist sympathizing” regardless of that person’s views for or against Hamas. I feel this must be pointed out: most people who are against slaughtering civilians don’t like it when either side does it.
Point 5 - Stop sanctuary cities. While I disagree with the policies here, what stands out to me is the last sentence. “We will require local cooperation with Federal Immigration Enforcement.” Let’s combine that actually with the deportation and Enemy Aliens act. A city that does resists ICE gathering and deporting non-citizens without a trial regardless of legal status could result in a lack of funding, and it’s potential that the GOP would require all levels of law enforcement to enact this aim of a president regardless of whether he has that authority over them.
Their sixth point seems to disallow the immigration of any migrants with, say, severe disabilities. Because they also promise to end chain migration, one has to offer this hypothetical: a leading member of their field would like to immigrate to the United States. Lets say they do this to pursue the American dream, perhaps. They love our country. They would also like access to state of the art medical care for a parent, sibling, or cousin, perhaps. This person has proven successful enough to pay for both themselves and this person they care for. They will not come if they are unable to bring their ward. In this merit focused system, wouldn’t their disabled or sick relative be denied entry despite the fact they have a benefactor who would more than pay their way? In denying the ward, we also lose primary applicant. Or is the GOP willing to say that in some cases, the “merit” of one weighs the scale enough to overlook the “lack of merit” of another they will not immigrate without?
Of course, after all this talk, they place a statement implying that immigration hurts the American worker. That’s because this is a sort of blood and soil nationalism that doesn’t actually care about legality, threat, compassion, or merit. It cares about the populist message of us versus them. It needs someone to hate. To blame. To crush. And if they point and say the immigrants are ruining the economy, how many American people can you convince to deport legal residents who’ve done nothing wrong?
Four - The Economy
Chapter three starts in the middle of the page because the incompetent people writing this didn’t think that chapters should start on a new page. It’s highly bothersome.
Speaking of bothersome, we’re back to the five point paragraph type of introduction. We’re incapable of picking a style and sticking with it because the writers are not good at writing. We also get the “Democrat Party” when proper writing would write it as “the Democratic Party” because that’s how words work. The Republicans refuse to say democratic though because I guess it has a stronger association with democracy. We continue our constant parade of pointless capitalization.
Point 1 - Cut Regulations. You might remember this from the inflation page. Wow, we’re bringing it up again? Are we any more detailed this time? Not at all. Bad regulations “stifle jobs, freedom, innovation, and make everything more expensive.” Cool, give examples. What, specifically, do you want overturned? Why bring it up again and refuse to give any details? Is it perhaps because the writers were lazy and didn’t want to find any? Was it because the committee was incapable of agreeing? Is it because you have no interest in discussing policy here and only want to engage in platitudes where you can get away with it? Or is it because your deregulation desires would be unpopular and dangerous?
Point two. The Trump Tax Cuts. They propose eliminating taxes on tips. I don’t have any strong opinions on this because I’m not a tip worker. I did some googling and it seems like some embrace this, others don’t care about it, some would prefer increased wages, some would welcome getting to keep more of their tips. I do wonder how much of this is an attempt to get around annual gift limits without eating into lifetime tax-free gift amounts. People have attempted to get around the taxability of tips before by claiming that they’re gifts actually. This Fox News article implies that any amount given in response to a business transaction would not be considered a gift. If you turn tips into wholly non-taxable income, theoretically, you could tip someone 1 million and no one would have to pay taxes on that transfer that would otherwise be considered a gift.
Point 3 says look to chapter 5, here’s a very brief overview of chapter 5. Wow what a great use of space.
Point 4 is about energy production. While discussing the use of fossil fuels, it mentions nothing about investing in and creating green infrastructure. The GOP has taken an anti-green energy stance rather than taking the stance of, “Hey. We’ll take advantage of both and make us a true powerhouse when it comes to global energy production.” After all, from a pure capital stance, if off load a large amount of our energy consumption onto green energy, we have more oil, natural gas, and coal that we can then sell to other countries as well as making sure that we have vast reserves in the case of some catastrophic event that requires them. While my position is in more in line with the Green New Deal, the GOP’s anti-green stance, denying it whole sale, seems to be purely reactionary instead of attempting to have the United States stand at the forefront of the world. Even if you don’t want to utilize green energy at home, being the world’s top manufacturer and innovator in green energy would allow us to export those technologies to other countries, including to our allies that we might want to stop relying on Russia’s reserves, for instance.
Speaking of reserves, point 5, “Champion Innovation,” talks about cryptocurrency. Yes, I’m sure we’re all very tired of hearing about crypto. This isn’t the point but “un-American” has a hyphen in it. “U-N-capital-American” is incorrect and also it looks ugly because you have a random capital in the middle of a word. This is what I mean by continual incompetence. Here the GOP wants, specifically, Bitcoin, and they don’t want a Central Bank Digital Currency, aka crypto attached by the fed to the dollar. Several countries have or are considering rolling out a CBDC. The Federal Reserve is and has been investigating the possible benefits and risks of creating one, though it cannot be made without congressional. Of course, reservations about crypto make sense. There are security concerns as with all crypto. But what interests me here is that the GOP is not anti-crypto. They’re explicitly pro-crypto. One of the vast problems with crypto is its volatility. Its value, unattached to the dollar, fluctuates greatly. Go watch the Dan Olson videos on crypto. Are we anti-CBDC but pro-crypto because we like the idea of the easy scams and trampling on people? It sounds like the GOP wants unstable crypto.
In the same point, they say they’re against Biden’s executive order on AI - I’m assuming the one issued October 30th, 2023. Having read through that EO, I’m confused on what they’re opposition is, probably because this platform is allergic to providing details on literally anything because they know providing details would make the American people not want to vote for them. Much of the EO is focused on making sure the government doesn’t allow AI to jeopardize national security. But I think what they’re ultimately opposed to is the watermarking of AI so that everyone can identify and discern the difference between what is real and what is artificial. That way we know when videos of politicians are real and when they aren’t. So we can tell when deepfake porn is, you know, a deepfake. Part of the opposition would come from the fact that only humans and their estates can own or sell their copyrights. If we have a watermark outing things as AI, then it becomes easy to deny things IP protection. That’s the correct option. To keep the arts alive, things created by generative AI must be denied copyright protection.
Five - American Dream
We don’t have a thesis statement after our list of points in our intro paragraph, but we also don’t have all the promised talking points discussed so that’s a new one.
Point One - Housing Affordability. There’s a sort of YIMBY-ism present here with the promise to open federal lands for construction though there’s no suggestion of which lands, for what sort of housing, and the proximity to urban areas. My uncharitable question is if this is about actually building housing or if it’s about an excuse to open up federal land for logging. To build housing, you have to clear the way for houses, after all, and certain Republicans do like the idea of letting logging and mining companies tear through federal lands. This would give them a sort of cover for such actions. There’s no other detail as far as any other sort of YIMBY policy where increased supply would lower costs. I am a YIMBY type, so I’m not opposed in general to building more houses, but I’m skeptical of the federal lands comment being benevolent in nature. They also mention more deregulation but, once again, they refuse to name any specific regulations they think should be dealt with.
Point two - their plain to make higher education more affordable they plan to not do anything about the cost of higher education. They want to create more alternatives but I do find it important to ask: what alternatives? Apprenticeships? Trade school? Colleges where the price of admission is military or other civil service? They don’t say because they don’t say anything in this document. This requires the question that always comes up in moments of education: What is the point of education? If you answered “to get jobs,” congratulations, you don’t understand education.
Point three - healthcare. They don’t mention a single policy here. I know, that’s so shocking. They say they want to lower costs of healthcare and prescriptions, but how do they aim to do so? Are we going to allow medicare to negotiate prescription costs? Will we lower the period of patent protection of brand prescriptions so cheaper generics can be made and sold in a fast time period? Will we change broadcast rules so pharmaceutical companies are no longer allowed to advertise?
We then go on about lowering everyday costs with no particular policy. They talk about lower energy costs but have no interest in investing in creating green energy infrastructure to complement fossil fuels, reduce costs, increase US manufacturing and jobs, and increase our revenue from selling to other countries.
Six - Trade
Well it’s time to talk about the king of failed businesses tackling making deals with other countries and how those might affect the economy. Their intro paragraph goes back to listing points and having a thesis, but it only lists some of the points we’re going to go over, and the random capitalization is getting increasingly out of control.
Here’s a typing quirk that gets on my absolute nerves: Dollar sign 1 trillion dollars. Pick one or the other. The dollar sign already puts the word dollars in there. You’re being redundant. This is the same sort of incorrect, accepted bad writing that leads to people even in the entertainment industries referring to people being “casted” when the past tense of cast is cast. This document is filled with bad writing. But let’s talk content. This point promises to pass the “Trump Reciprocal Trade Act” with the idea that tariffs mean taxes can come down. This article in The Hill points out that doing so would worsen inflation, something he seems to want to lower. In an interview with The Harvard Gazette, economist Gordon Hanson said, “If we want to find policies that could help improve economic opportunities for less-educated workers, import tariffs should not be at the top of the list. … Tariffs are poorly targeted policy instruments for helping workers.” An article in the Financial Times claims, “Trump’s proposed tariffs and tax cuts would hurt low-income Americans the most.”
They seem to argue for a complete ban on imports from China. They go on to talk about increasing American manufacturing but don’t seem to suggest any policies for doing so except the idea of banning companies who “outsource jobs” from doing business with the federal government.
Seven - Seniors
Here the platform seems to blame any problems with Social Security and Medicare on immigration. In the preamble, the platform bucked a lot of the rhetoric in the primary by promising there will be no raising the retirement aid. Both parties are rightfully concerned about social security and have different ideas about tackling it. The GOP seems to think their economic goals and their immigration policies will fix it. Tying unrelated issues, like hardline immigration, to social security will scare some people into supporting things they might not otherwise. There’s not too much to talk about in this section besides the gross “it’s immigrants’ faults” nonsense. When they talk about chronic disease prevention, there’s little information about what they mean. One is increasing access to primary care providers which is a good thing. People I know are having trouble getting a primary care doctor. There aren’t openings for new patients. This is an issue. This is under a point labelled “support active and healthy living.” Okay. How? Subsidizing gym usage?Subsidies for preventative screenings? Increased investments in nutritional research and engineering?
Eight - Education
So we finally get to answer the question: what do Republicans think the point of education is?
In their little intro paragraph, they say, “Our Education System must prepare students for successful lives and well-paying jobs.” They’re half right. Education is essential to a successful life. But the purpose of general education has nothing to do with jobs. We’ll get to it.
Point one is about principals and teachers. They want to end tenure as a concept and want to embrace “merit pay.” What is merit pay? By what metric are we judging teachers? Test scores? Essays? Is a good teacher one who gets a class to score in the top percentiles or is it a teacher who raises test scores? If a teacher gets a class of educationally gifted students and thereby has a much smaller ceiling, how are they evaluated in comparison? What if we’re going by percentiles and that same teacher has students who score high on average because those students tend to score well in the first place and likely would have regardless of the teacher? My guess is the actual goal is to decimate the teacher’s unions.
Two - universal school choice. School choice is a way of saying undermining and destroying public education which has been a long term goal of the GOP. School choice often means sending tax payer dollars to private religious institutions for private religious educations which is a violation of the first amendment. As noted during the Betsy Devoss hearings, charter schools will sometimes force students to sign away their rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Federal dollars must only go where federal law is followed. Private religious schools often discriminate on the basis of religion, sexual, and gender identity both of student and guardian. That is not following federal rules.
Three. Republicans believe education is about creating a workforce. No. No it is not. It cannot and must not ever be simply a way to make a workforce. How often do you hear people complain about things they learned in school that they’ve never ended up using? Is that how we’re going to start measuring the worthiness of education? With the amount of people using generative AI and this very platform’s embrace of it, the stories of teachers getting AI generated essays in high school and college, will this platform say there’s no point in most people learning how to write? How about algebra? Geometry? What about chemistry? World history? Band, choir, art? What suddenly becomes useless to study because most people won’t get a job in it? You misunderstand what education is. Education is there to enrich the human being. It has nothing to do with whether or not you will “use it” in the corporate sphere. You “use” education by it expanding your brain, teaching it how to expand, enriching the ways in which you can engage with and experience the world, giving you more paths you can follow, more sights and thoughts you can have. A lot of people in college complain about general education requirements. But general education requirements are important to make sure that you are a well rounded human person not to make sure you can get a job. A liberal arts education exists to make your world larger. People who want to tell you education is not worth it, is bad, that you should only ever focus on your interests and what field you think you will end up working in? They want you to have a small world. Why the ever loving fuck should anyone allow that?
Point four. “Safe, secure, and drug-free schools.” In this brief paragraph the GOP has about making our schools safe, not once do they mention gun violence. They don’t mention school shootings at all in their platform. I think a lot of Republican efforts on gun violence amount to theatre of the safe. A lot of it leads to restrictions on students, their privacy, and their freedoms. But you would expect in past years that an even remotely serious political party that dared to discuss safety in our schools would make a passing effort to talk about the children that keep dying and how we all want to protect them. But because the GOP had no interest in putting forth a serious political document, and because they are not a serious party, they don’t mention it even in passing. They don’t offer their stupid “give teachers guns” idea. They don’t discuss mental health, their go-to scapegoat. They don’t talk about their beloved disaster of school resource officers. They don’t mention it at all. Because this document does not, fundamentally, care about the safety of our children.
Five. Parental rights. What the hell does that mean? Well, they sure don’t clarify here. Sorry, I’m a bit worked up in this section. Education is very important to me. So what might they mean by parental rights? Well, lets look at the Parents Bill of Rights Act House Republicans passed in 2023 and see what it has to say. It says parents have a right to know, which seems to mean, must be told, if an employee lets a student use their proffered pronouns or name. No nicknames for Timmy unless Mom and Dad say yes. You want to go by your middle name? Get fucked. Most importantly, schools must out children to their parents regardless of the child’s wishes. That is going to cause harm and keep people in the closet. The closet does not remove queerness, it only kills people. If a student wants a vaccine and a parent doesn’t want it, the school can’t vouch for the child. Yay. Or maybe parental rights, as the Education Week article point out, means Florida conservatives passing their disgusting Don’t Say Gay Bill, which I go over in detail in a different video. That’s the Mom’s for Liberty approach. Ironic name for a bunch of people who want to take away educational liberty. In that article, Jeffrey Shulman is quoted as saying, “Still, there is no parental right to say I don’t want my child to be taught this or that.” But it seems Republicans want there to be. Suddenly we’re opting out of lessons on evolution, geology because of the age of the planet, physics because of the age of the universe, history because of the presence of queer people, and so and so forth. An opinion article in the Washington Post points out, “Courts have found that parents have great authority when it comes to deciding how to raise and educate their children. This right, however, does not mean that public schools must cater to parents’ individual ideas about education.” Part of this is because Republicans are pushing for populism. Populism, you remember that? The idea that you can pretend anger is politics as long as you give people someone to hate? Teaching is a specialized skill. People go to school for it, people research it. It is difficult. Of course. Yes, educators know more about how and what to teach a child than a parent does. That is simply a fact. Professor Michael Barth Berkman is quoted in the AP as saying, “I would say that part of the game here is to just sort of discredit schools and to discredit the public school system.” He’s right. This isn’t about legitimate concern. It’s about being anti-education. Suzanne Nossel rights in Time, “A movement that for years … sought to prevent the government from controlling how they educated their own children now seeks to decree what entire student bodies and school districts can and cannot learn and read. The rhetoric of parents’ rights has morphed from a movement aimed at constraining the power of government over education to one that is mobilizing politicians and legislatures to extend the heavy hand of the government into the classroom.” A small section of extremist conservative evangelicals continue to aim to control the rest of the population while decrying that anyone else existing and having rights beyond their desires is government overreach. Those are also the people who have taken over the GOP.
Point 6 reads, “Knowledge and skills, not CRT and Gender Indoctrination.” Ask these people to define critical race theory and then give them the bonus question of asking what critical theory is and then ask how they’re being taught. Chances are, you’ll find out these people are just racists. You cannot teach about history, about slavery and the civil rights movement, about Japanese-American internment camps, about the Holocaust without discussing racism. You cannot teach the poetry Langston Hughes, the song Strange Fruit, Jackie Robinson, desegregation of schools, Loving v. Virginia. What do they mean by gender indoctrination? Based on Florida’s Don’t Say Gay, it’s acknowledging that trans people exist. Can you talk about Shakespearean acting and men playing all the women? Can you watch Mulan? Can you say that boys are allowed to wear makeup if a boy shows up in some and you have to break up some bullying? I’ll just direct you to my talk about Don’t Say Gay rather than go over it again here. The long story short is that Republicans wish to have England’s Section 28 because they want people in the closet and they want to call any acknowledgment of queer people inappropriate. That parental rights thing is a lot of people wanting to go into libraries and get rid of any books with gay people in them. This is not about ensuring politics. It’s about erasing people.
Point 7 is about making sure our schools make people patriotic. They’re pushing their 1776 commission. So what is that? The commission’s report, NBC News says, “claims there’s no truth to statements that the Founding Fathers were hypocritical for upholding slavery while claiming that all men are created equal.” But if you’re a slaveowner, you either think all men aren’t equal or you thought slaves weren’t people. As an article on Today says, “Trump has criticized history courses that cover where America went wrong, saying that anti-racism teachings are ‘child abuse’…” The 1776 Report includes the phrase “Blacks enjoyed…” Um. Hi. No. Don’t say that. Wow, maybe this was written by racists. It explicitly makes the claim that the Christian God is responsible for America and that this should be acknowledged which, again, violates the first.
Point 8 is about putting religion back in schools. Students are already allowed to pray and read the Bible in school. Students aren’t allowed to use their beliefs to bully other students. They can’t answer questions with “but this is what the Bible says and you can’t mark it wrong.” Schools are not allowed to teach the Bible or to teach that any religion is correct. Students cannot be coerced through any sort of pressure to participate in prayer. Prayers cannot be broadcast over the intercom. You cannot privilege Christianity.
Finally point nine. They want to be rid of the Department of Education. This is one of the worst written paragraphs of the whole platform and that irony would be funny if this chapter wasn’t outright insulting and infuriating. Republicans seem to want to further destroy education in this country. We must not let them.
Nine - Common Sense
Common sense did not guide whoever has been writing this platform. Here we list some of the things we’re going to talk about but not all. Whatever.
One - Families. Sanctity of Marriage. There’s been a lot of talk about how this platform finally is the one where the platform isn’t anti-gay. Is that true? What do people say when they use the phrase “sanctity of marriage?” I’ve only ever heard that phrase when people talk about how gay marriage violates the sanctity. So that’s what comes to mind. But let’s take a step back. Sanctity is a religion thing. Guess what? The government is not in the religion business and it cannot be. Whether marriages are sanctified or not has nothing to do with the government. I sincerely doubt this is the win some gay conservatives think it is.
Two - They’re going to do a law and order in the cities. Through what politics? They don’t really say. It’s implied that they want thorough and extended qualified immunity so cops can commit whatever crimes they want and not be held accountable criminally or civilly. They say they’re going to replenish police departments but make no suggestions as to how they’ll accomplish this. They call for standing against marxist prosecutors but don’t give any examples of what that means or what policies that implies. Is there a single marxist operating as a prosecutor in the country? Or do they just mean the prosecutors prosecuting convicted felon Donald Trump? They say they’ll address homelessness with compassion but offer no suggestions of what that means. Are we building housing? Are we providing training? Food? Health care?
Three is about D.C. Good for them for making sure buildings and monuments are taken care of. They want more fed control over the city. The more control the federal government has over DC, the more important it is to note that DC has no representation in Congress. The GOP wants to control the city while not allowing its residents to have much of a say at all. Shocking.
Four is about veterans. Apparently they don’t have the money to take care of veterans because of undocumented immigrants. That’s not true, but it sure does let them point the finger and shout, “Hate!” like anyone reading their platform is a rabid dog. There’s no commentary on PTSD.
Five is about higher education. Hi. Why is this not in your education section? Is it because this is an incompetent document written by bad writers? Yes. They say they’ll “fire Radical Left accreditors.” What in the everloving hell does that mean? Do they want to slacken the standards for accreditation? What comes to my mind is how when Former Governor Bevin tried to mess with University of Louisville and the accreditation agency said, “Hey, you can’t do that, what you’re doing will force us to remove their accreditation.” They likely want to be able to exert as much political control on public universities as they want and not run into pesky bodies saying, “No, there must be a level of independence.” Bevin’s anti-education angle, by the way, is what lost him a second term. Deservedly. He sucked. They say they’ll drive down tuition but they offer no suggestions of how. When they talk about Due Process, all that comes to my mind is reports of Title 9 violations on college campuses. Can’t let frat boys face responsibility for raping people. When they talk about suing schools for discrimination, they likely mean affirmative action. You know, a thing SCOTUS recently slapped down.
Six is about antisemitism. There’s no mention of their Jewish Space Lasers congressperson.
Seven is liberal arts education - they say they want to restore it. But earlier they were talking about how school is meant to train you for jobs. Uh-oh, seems like they’re contradicting themselves or they simply don’t understand what a liberal arts education is.
Eight is about beauty. They want to “promote beauty in public architecture.” Hi, arts person here. What do you mean by that? Is there a specific art style you find beautiful? Are there principles of beauty you think architecture must match or have a set of? Is this about aesthetics? Is it about making unique pieces that wow people? What do you mean when you say “beauty” and why is that necessarily a good thing? Are you going to commission this beautiful architecture?
Nine is how they want to have a party in 2026. Wow. Cool. No details, but I’m glad you gave space in your insanely short, sparse platform for it.
Ten - For the People
Point one is complaining about Trump facing criminal charges for committing those felonies he committed. They also plan to stop “woke” government though they do not define that, do not discuss the policies they disagree with, or mention how they want to remedy it. Cool. Good job.
Two is free speech. Tell me, how do you intend to do don’t say gay educational book bannings while talking about defunding institutions who do censorship? We’re ordering you to engage in censorship which we will then use to defund you. Does this mean the SEC will no longer be allowed to issue fines for cursing or sexuality on radio and television? When you say you’re going to protect Free Speech online, does this mean you’re going to be forcefully pro-porn and NSFW given that that is protected speech and expression? That requires you to be forcefully against Project 2025, to demand Amazon, Smashwords, OnlyFans and more remove their censorship against non-illegal acts, so performers would have to be allowed to engage in noncon roleplay for instance. Somehow, I doubt that’s what they mean.
Three is religious liberty. They want a task force mean to combat anti-Christian bias. No comments on bias against any other belief because they don’t care about other religious beliefs. They want Christians to be able to force themselves on everyone else and never have the restrictions of polite society placed on them. When they mention that everyone must be allowed to act in accordance with their beliefs, my brain goes to defenses for anti-queer discrimination that claims to be simply acting in accordance to beliefs. Think Kim Davis. Think about how people want to use religion as an excuse to deny healthcare and certain insurances. “We’re a Catholic hospital and we don’t believe your marriage is real so we won’t allow you to see your dying spouse, actually.”
Four is abortion. Supposedly, they support birth control and IVF so that’s cool. It’s something. They suggest that they’ll accept a vote of the people of a state to embrace abortion rights. That seems to go against their entire recent history. They actually make a statement that implies abortion violates the 14th Amendment in general, but year, they’re totally not coming after abortion more and more like they’ve always promised.
Five is about them anti-trans. They’re just transphobes. They despise trans people and want to make it so they’re shut out of public life.
Six is about election integrity. It has some fear-mongering, but it doesn’t mention how their nominee tried to overturn an election and a mob attempted to lynch the Congress.
Seven is a commitment to protecting territories and a vague statement about greater participation. What does that mean? Giving them statehood? One wonders.
Eleven - Peace and Strength
I’m so close to not having to read any more of this drivel. Okay. We’re at the final push. Let’s get through it. This is the military chapter.
One - National Interest. Apparently, we need to protect the flag? I don’t know if this is a symbolic foreign policy thing or if they literally mean protecting the flag and going against protests against it? I’m tired writing this. What is a foreign policy focused on protecting the flag? That means nothing. We get another under God thing so I’m compelled to again point out we are not a Christian nation. We are a secular nation and must remain so.
Two - modernizing the military. They want to give us an Iron Dome. No we’re not currently facing a threat that requires one but one ran by competent people? It’ll increase manufacturing and allow people to feel safer so it’s whatever, I don’t have strong feelings. They want to get “woke Leftwing Democrats fired as soon as possible.” That sounds like Project 2025 lets get rid of all government employees who aren’t committed to MAGA but they’re not specific so I don’t know exactly what they mean by that. Does that mean all leftwing members of the military? Are we required to take an political compass test before joining?
Three is about alliances. They want to end the war in Ukraine though there’s no statement on how. Appeasement to Russia? Funding Ukraine? Urging Nato to step in? Urging the Russian people to rise up? Sanctions? Other pressure? A ground war? They say nothing. They don’t even name the war. When they mention championing independent nations in the Indo-Pacific, do they mean anyone in specific? My mind goes to Taiwan automatically. Are we merely implying that so as to not piss off China pre-emptively?
Four - we’re strengthening our economy, military, and diplomatic efforts. What does that mean? We have no specific policies here at all. Does this mean increasing the budget for the state department? More investment into ambassadors and embassies? How about soft power? Are we going to make sure we remain the top exporter of culture throughout the world by increasing our investment in American made art of all kinds or will Republicans continue their assault on art funding?
Five and we’re back to the border. You already had a section on this.
Six - we’re wanting to increase domestic manufacturing specifically for defense industries. So I’m assuming here we’re talking military manufacturing.
Seven - They want to further increase protection against cyber attacks. Good, yes. How? What do you mean? Raising security standards is good. Are we hiring more people? Investing in new technology?
And… well, that’s the end of the platform.
But we’ve still got more to talk about.
Twelve - What’s Missing
Because this is a pretty barebones document, let’s talk about what the platform doesn’t discuss. What’s missing? Well, the first major thing missing is, well, policy. This policy platform is practically devoid of it. It’s an inept document written by the incompetent. Or, to be more generous, it’s a document meant to hide the GOP’s policy goals behind vague rhetoric because they know their policy prescriptions are bad and revealing them leaves them open to political attacks that will inevitably lose them votes.
The 2016 platform including a couple of paragraphs about judicial philosophy. They talked about Scalia and Natural Law. They don’t do that here. I vehemently disagreed with the theories put forth in 2016 and I think Scalia was horrid for the country. But that had enough information to send me googling and reading and forming opinions on their opinions. There’s no such luck here. Speaking of, 2016 included multiple court cases they wanted to overturn, cases they celebrated, how they’d respond to specific cases, and the sorts of rulings they would like from the courts. No such thing here. There’s no commentary on Windsor, Obergefell, barely a celebration for Dobbs but they also didn’t mention by name. Loper overturned Chevron. This platform has no mention of how Republicans aim to take advantage of that ruling and how they want to run regulatory agencies now. The 11th Circuit has a “banning conversion therapy torture on gay people violates free speech” idiotic ruling from Trump judges. The platform doesn’t mention the party’s opinion on such rulings. They don’t mention presidential immunity. They don’t mention ethics for the judiciary. They don’t lay out their disagreements with liberal justices. There’s no talk of their opinion on what to do about filling court vacancies, SCOTUS or elsewise.
Term limits are a popular talking point about people in congress. The platform doesn’t offer an opinion on this one way or another.
Just as we talked about school safety without so much as mentioning school shootings, we don’t talk about gun violence anywhere in this platform. You would expect, even in this disaster of a document, some sort of screed about how the evil Demonrats are going to use gun violence as an excuse to take your weapons. But no, we don’t discuss gun violence at all. There’s no talk about how they blame mental health or the left or even immigrants for gun violence, all of which would be incorrect, but it would be acknowledging the scourge of gun violence. This platform absconds its duty, though, so we don’t talk about it. Going into the convention there was an assassination attempt on Former President, Current Felon Donald Trump. There’s nary a statement in here about it when they did have time to add at least a passing mention. You could discuss inflamed political rhetoric while pretending that the GOP isn’t filled with harsh and vitriolic language about anyone who remotely disagrees with them.
There’s no discussion of the arts. If we’re so obsessed with making sure America stands on top of everything in the world, then we need to continue to make sure that our art stands on top. The platform has no commentary on how it aims to help that OR how it opposes other suggestions for it. I know there won’t be a call for a federal theatre project in a platform written by conservatives who despise artists, but there’s no talk of funding or taking away funding from the arts. Reading the platform, you would expect a mention of wanting to fund “patriotic” art. No talk on our museums or libraries. No calls to celebrate the American novel, musical, artistic legends, writers, or musicians.
Speaking of art: There’s no discussion on NSFW material in general. Project 2025 calls for the banning of porn, criminalizing those who make or distribute it, and putting people who consume it on sex offender lists. While the GOP attempts to half-heartedly distance itself from Project 2025, they don’t mention this at all. The GOP led efforts for failing age-verification in certain states, the sort of law that has PornHub banning itself in those jurisdictions.
While there’s a mention of birth control, there is no mention of contraceptives, something some on the right have decided is a good target. Speaking of ways to prevent the spread of STIs and unwanted pregnancies, there’s no discussion on their philosophy for sex education. Obviously they would talk about abstinence only education which has been proven not to work, and it’s bad policy, but they don’t mention it. They don’t talk about how they hate comprehensive sex ed, the thing actually works that they oppose time and time again.
There’s no sort of post-mortem on the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, what they learned, the things that went right and what they thought were mistakes, OR how they would respond differently if another pandemic were to break out during a theoretical GOP-controlled government.
Despite their talks of family and IVF, there’s no discussion of adoption. Coming from the GOP, you’d expect a sort of “adoption agencies should be allowed to discriminate because they’re religious” line, but there’s nothing. There’s also nothing about surrogacy, another place people like to attack gay people and women’s autonomy.
There’s no real talk about drugs or alcohol behind “drug free schools” and “ahhh fenty!” There’s no talk about cannabis and their opinion on it. There’s no talk about nicotine, vapes, cigarettes, and what age they think you have to be to buy nicotine products. There’s no talk about pushes to ban or severely limit nicotine sales. There’s no talk about the opioid epidemic. They don’t discuss the use of hallucinogens as mental health care as is being explored across the country.
They don’t discuss the post office and their opinions on it.
They don’t talk about net neutrality or even the conservative pet talking point about Section 230. They don’t discuss drag queens or infrastructure. This platform is so thoroughly empty, that you could go on and on about how much this platform completely ignores because it doesn’t care about informing people about policy.
Thirteen - The Makers
So who made this thing? Who signed off on this brief spiel of glaring incompetence?
Let’s start with the people who should be most embarrassed to have their name on this platform: the editors, the people who looked at the horrid writing, the atrocious desing, the terrible typographic decisions and said, “Yeah, that’s fine.” First we’ve got Ted Royer, founder of Dissident Communications and former speechwriter for Trump. Ah, suddenly the horrible writing makes sense. Trump’s speeches are uniformly bad. Hey, maybe get better at your job.
The other editor is fellow Dissident Communications member, Alec Torres, another Trump speechwriter which, again, explains the horrible writing. It’s Torres. Get better at your job. While googling Torres, I read some of his articles. He’s not a bad writer. So why the hell did he sign off on this? That makes it clear to me that this is poorly written on purpose. It’s a cynical ploy made under the belief that all of their supporters are morons who can’t handle competent writing. Because Trump can’t write his way to a C on a fifth-grade essay even with the help of ChatGPT, they have to piece together shoddy sentences in a poorly constructed document so they don’t outshine him by showcasing how utterly incompetent he is. “We think the base is filled with people who can’t handle an actual platform, so we’ll hand them this in the hopes it’ll make them angry. We trust them to be too dumb to get annoyed with the lack of information.”
Assistant editor Brittany Baldwin is also a former speechwriter for when the Felon was the President.
So three of the people who helped the former president consistently sound like a raving lunatic edited an embarrassment of a platform. That speaks well of him, doesn’t it?
The Platform Committee is chaired by Senator Marsha Blackburn. Blackburn opposed Obergefell and Bostock. I unfortunately watched her speech at CSPAN. She hates the IRS and wants to let more people commit tax fraud I suppose rather than make it easier to understand and file their taxes. She calls DEI racist because she’s a racist. She talks about cutting regulations but again, she doesn’t mention any. It was a bad speech. I wonder why the platform is bad. Well it might be because she too thinks the base is filled with idiots. The New York Post quotes her as saying, “What we heard repeatedly is that people wanted a document that was simple, that was concise, that would tell people what we believe and then also lay out what we’re going to do about the problems that the country is facing. … People wanted something that was readable, something they could print off and take as they go door to door.” The platform is not readable. It is a mess. The writing style is horrendous. You failed, Senator. You also failed to explain what you’re going to do about problems because the platform holds almost no policy prescriptions. She wants to make it illegal for people to take minors across state lines for an abortion in a state where it’s legal because she doesn’t care for women. She supports the ineffective internet censorship bill KOSA. Oh hey, remember the platform talking about hating censorship? It was a blatant lie, of course. She’s pro-discriminating against the gays.
How about Co-Chair for the platform committee, Representative Michael Waltz? Well, he’s for Don’t Say Gay laws and views LGBT people being acknowledged as sexualization. Though he voted for the Respect for Marriage Act which is interesting. He joined in on the effort to overturn the 2020 election because he doesn’t believe in Democracy. Actually, that’s enough for me. His other positions don’t really matter once you start deciding democracy should be overturned for your idiot baby man.
Michael Whatley runs the RNC. While adding some distance between himself and Project 2025, he didn’t actually comment on its content. Oh, and as a North Carolinian paper puts it, “He Also backed Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.” He also doesn’t say he’ll accept the 2024 results if Trump loses. Wow, another person who doesn’t want democracy.
Conclusion
This is a shoddy document horribly written by a collection of dangerous conservatives who don’t care at all about policy. They view their supporters as a group of idiots who couldn’t understand a competently written document. They don’t want to discuss actual policy details, goals, and philosophies, sacrificing all three for shouting and emphasis. Painting over nothing with a vague promise of Trumpian rhetoric doesn’t actually put anything there. They don’t put in details because they know their positions are opposed by the majority of Americans and detailing them would lose them support. Maybe they know too much detail will show that Project 2025 is what the GOP wants. That or they don’t have any positions. All the serious people left the party and want nothing to do with them. As such, they don’t really have goals or opinions. They have the anger of populism and nothing else.
I almost feel bad for Republican voters. Your politicians despise and view you as simpletons. Best of luck to you, and more luck to the rest of us.
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