By DEXTER DUGGAN
Political-party platforms, issued for their national conventions every four years, are both a wish list and an affirmation of what’s important to them.
Not everything they stand for will be achieved, but they want voters to know how a party sees itself and its commitments.
Sometimes the platforms have unintentionally comical aspects, like the Democrats in 2016 pledging to fight for affordable health-care premiums. However, they claimed to have done that six years ago, ramming through unyielding Obamacare in 2010 without a single Republican vote.
That was supposed to have made premiums way lower, but Barack Obama’s lies only resulted in costs rocketing higher. Having learned nothing — or at least admitting nothing about their failure — the Democrats pledge to continue that fight now.
This week The Wanderer looks at the Republican platform. Next week, the Democrats’.
Of most interest to many readers are protection of, or restoration of, the core moral values supported by the Republican platform, but forcefully rejected by the Democrats.
Each party wants to prove itself to groups that stand behind it. For Republicans, that’s people who want a healthy, inspiring, and united States of America; for Democrats, that’s bickering, contentious groups that yearn to weaken, befuddle, or even tear apart the nation.
Famous liberal Democrats of the 20th century like U.S. Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York and Henry M. Jackson of Washington would be driven out of that party today as hopeless reactionaries.
The Republicans in their preamble note the catastrophes imposed on the nation by Obama and his Democrats, who have “dismantled Americans’ system of health care. They have replaced it with a costly and complicated scheme that limits choices and takes away our freedom. . . .
“They refuse to control our borders but try to control our schools, farms, businesses, and even our religious institutions….
“The president has been regulating to death a free-market economy that he does not like and does not understand. He defies the laws of the United States by refusing to enforce those with which he does not agree. And he appoints judges who legislate from the bench rather than apply the law.”
In their platform section on “A rebirth of constitutional government,” the Republicans say that “man-made law must be consistent with God-given, natural rights; and that if God-given, natural, inalienable rights come in conflict with government, court, or human-granted rights, God-given, natural, inalienable rights always prevail. . . .”
Citing the late Justice Antonin Scalia as an example of a Supreme Court jurist who understood the proper role, the GOP platform says a Republican president must be elected to fill High-Court vacancies. The new justices can begin to reverse decisions favoring permissive abortion, “same-sex marriage,” and acceptance of Obamacare, the platform says.
“Only such appointments will enable courts to begin to reverse the long line of activist decisions — including Roe, Obergefell, and the Obamacare cases — that have usurped Congress’s and states’ lawmaking authority, undermined constitutional protections, expanded the power of the judiciary at the expense of the people and their elected representatives, and stripped the people of their power to govern themselves,” the platform says.
“We encourage Congress to use the check of impeachment for judges who unconstitutionally usurp Article 1 powers. In tandem with a Republican Senate, a new Republican president will restore to the court a strong conservative majority that will follow the text and original meaning of the Constitution and our laws,” the GOP document continues.
The platform also said it “condemn(s)” the High Court’s Windsor decision, which rejected the Defense of Marriage Act by Congress.
Although traditional marriage “has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values,” “five unelected lawyers” overthrew that definition for the entire nation, the GOP says.
“The Bill of Rights lists religious liberty, with its rights of conscience, as the first freedom to be protected,” the platform says. “Religious freedom in the Bill of Rights protects the right of the people to practice their faith in their everyday lives.”
However, “(o)ngoing attempts to compel individuals, businesses, and institutions of faith to transgress their beliefs are part of a misguided effort to undermine religion and drive it from the public square. . . .
“We pledge to defend the religious beliefs and rights of conscience of all Americans and to safeguard religious institutions against government control….We likewise endorse the efforts of Republican state legislators and governors who have defied intimidation from corporations and the media in defending religious liberty. . . .
“We support the right of the people to conduct their businesses in accordance with their religious beliefs, and condemn public officials who have proposed boycotts against businesses that support traditional marriage,” the GOP platform says.
“We pledge to protect those business owners who have been subjected to hate campaigns, threats of violence, and other attempts to deny their civil rights.”
The Republicans affirm the individual right to keep and bear arms, “a natural, inalienable right that predates the Constitution and is secured by the Second Amendment. Lawful gun ownership enables Americans to exercise their God-given right of self-defense for the safety of their homes, their loved ones, and their communities.”
However, that doesn’t mean Republicans think violent criminals should be given guns — especially by the White House. The platform recalls the gun-running scheme early in the Obama administration that was covered up, whereby liberal Democrats hoped that once Mexican criminals had weapons slipped to them by the U.S. government, this would create pressure for more U.S. gun control.
“We call for a thorough investigation — by a new Republican administration — of the deadly ‘Fast and Furious’ operation perpetrated by Department of Justice officials who approved and allowed illegal sales of guns to known violent criminals,” the GOP says.
Affirming a number of pro-life principles, the platform says that “we assert the sanctity of human life, and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution, and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.”
The platform also opposes public funding to perform or promote abortion “or to fund organizations, like Planned Parenthood, so long as they provide or refer for elective abortions or sell fetal body parts rather than provide health care. . . .
“We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life,” the Republicans say, adding that they “oppose the non-consensual withholding or withdrawal of care or treatment, including food and water, from individuals with disabilities, newborns, the elderly, or the infirm, just as we oppose euthanasia and assisted suicide.”
The platform calls for assistance, rather than penalization, for women with unplanned pregnancies, while condemning the Democratic Party’s “almost limitless support for abortion, and their strident opposition to even the most basic restrictions on abortion, (that) put them drastically out of step with the American people.”
The GOP condemns the Supreme Court’s recent Hellerstedt decision that allows abortion clinics to provide substandard care, and also opposes embryonic stem-cell research and federal funding for it, but supports adult stem-cell research.
“We support state and federal efforts against the cruelest forms of abortion, especially dismemberment abortion procedures, in which unborn babies are literally torn apart limb from limb,” the Republicans say, and express support for a federal version of the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.
From Good To Great
A July 18 statement from the Washington-based Susan B. Anthony List pro-life activist organization congratulated the Republican platform, saying it had gone “from good to great.”
The organization’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, said: “Notably, Republicans moved to advocate for the codification of the Hyde Amendment, longstanding bipartisan legislation which protects the conscience rights of taxpayers by ensuring public funds are not used for abortion on demand. The new Democratic Party platform, on the other hand, supports repeal of this consensus policy.”
Dannenfelser noted the GOP call to defund abortion provider Planned Parenthood, and Republicans’ criticism of the Democrats’ pro-abortion extremism.
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