Former president Donald Trump\u2019s campaign advisers are pushing to significantly simplify and streamline the official platform of the Republican Party, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post.<\/p>\n
Trump campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, the authors of the memo, criticized the \u201ctextbook-long platforms\u201d the party has published for decades, which they said should be free from \u201cspecial interest influence.\u201d With the party\u2019s current platform standing at more than 60 pages, the advisers emphasized that it was \u201cincumbent upon\u201d the party \u201cto ensure our policy commitments to the American people are clear, concise, and easily digestible for every voter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Republicans opted not to write a new platform in 2020, leaving much to potentially be revised over the coming weeks. This year, the GOP hopes to hash out its platform during a closed-door meeting the week before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, which runs July 15 through 18.<\/p>\n
Platform committee meetings have been televised in the past. Holding a private meeting earlier would also reduce public attention to the process.<\/p>\n
A person familiar with the planning, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal details, said in past years lobbyists and special interest groups at the convention have pushed for issues that their clients sought.<\/p>\n
\u201cPublishing an unnecessarily verbose treatise will provide more fuel for our opponent\u2019s fire of misinformation and misrepresentation to voters,\u201d the memo dated Thursday states.<\/p>\n
The New York Times earlier reported on the memo.<\/p>\n
Although it\u2019s not clear yet what this year\u2019s document will say, several pieces of the most current document, last adopted in 2016, run counter to Trump\u2019s present-day political positions.<\/p>\n
In 2016, Trump ran on a Republican platform that called for a federal ban on abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy and a \u201chuman life amendment\u201d to the U.S. Constitution that would give the fetus legal protections.<\/p>\n
Trump has said that his position now is to allow states, not the federal government, to decide on any limits on the procedure in the wake of the Supreme Court\u2019s decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion. Democrats have continued to attack Trump for appointing several of the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, paving the way for near-total bans in some states.<\/p>\n
The 2016 document also said Republicans \u201cwill not accept any territorial change in Eastern Europe imposed by force,\u201d though Trump has indicated that he would pressure Ukraine to give up territory to achieve peace after the 2022 Russian invasion.<\/p>\n
The 2016 platform condemned the Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage and said parents should \u201cdetermine the proper medical treatment and therapy for their minor children,\u201d which was widely interpreted as a tacit approval of conversion therapy. But the language was written in a way that would also appear to diverge from Trump\u2019s call to outlaw gender-affirming treatment for minors, even with the support of parents.<\/p>\n
The process for crafting the new party platform is being run by lawyer Randy Evans, former U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg under Trump and the executive director of the 2024 platform committee; former Trump budget adviser Russell Vought, a self-described Christian nationalist who is seeking sweeping expansion of presidential power in a second Trump administration; and Ed Martin, a well-known social conservative activist who is president of Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, whose platform includes opposing feminist goals and championing of traditional, stay-at-home roles for women.<\/p>\n
Some social conservatives have worried the party will make changes that soften its official stance on issues such as abortion. Antiabortion groups have called for the platform to nod to a federal role on abortion.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not the number of words, it\u2019s the intent that matters,\u201d said Kristi Hamrick, vice president of media and policy for the antiabortion group Students for Life. \u201cA strong statement that affirms the need to protect all Americans from conception to natural death, in law and in service, and that affirms GOP support for addressing the human rights issue of our day \u2014 abortion \u2014 at every level of government, local, state and federal \u2014 is acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steve Deace, a conservative commentator in Iowa who supported Ron DeSantis in the GOP primary, said he \u201cstopped fighting over the party platform a long time ago\u201d because he believes it has not mattered much in practice.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump is king. He conquered the party. \u2026 He may now do as kings do,\u201d Deace added.<\/p>\n
Charles Moran, the president of the Log Cabin Republicans, a group for LGBTQ+ Republicans and their allies, said in a recent interview that he hoped to see a more \u201cinclusive\u201d platform than the one adopted in 2016.<\/p>\n
Moran argued that the previous platform had outdated language on many issues and said he would \u201clove to see\u201d a pared-down platform that was more of a \u201cstatement of beliefs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some veterans of GOP politics said on Saturday that the move to pare down the platform was politically smart.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe 15 people from each state care about the party platform, good for them. All it becomes is a Dem messaging doc anyway,\u201d Rick Wiley, a former political director for the Republican National Committee, wrote on social media.<\/p>\n
Michael Scherer contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Former president Donald Trump\u2019s campaign advisers are pushing to significantly simplify and streamline the official platform of the Republican Party, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post. Trump campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, the authors of the memo, criticized the \u201ctextbook-long platforms\u201d the party has published for decades, which they said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5676,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}