Conventional Wisdom II

In my last post, I argued that the people who were claiming that the assassination attempt against Donald Trump meant the election was suddenly all wrapped up for the Republican Party were panicking without any reason.

It’s early, but the first polls released since the shooting seem to support that argument. There will be countless more surprises in this campaign, especially as we get closer to the actual election, with lots more ups and downs to come. Pace yourself. Panicking doesn’t do anyone any good, so if you’re feeling nervous at any point, channel that energy into something productive: phone banking, writing postcards, volunteering for a campaign, whatever.

As the second night of the Republican National Convention gets underway in Milwaukee with a stream of GOP Senate candidates I think it’s worth pausing to remember the traditional part of the convention that they tried to speed-run past, and that’s the party platform.

Traditionally, these documents have been detailed programs for everything that a party promises to do in terms of its foreign policy and domestic agenda, and they serve as a deep dive into the nitty gritty details of government. As a result, they’re usually pretty lengthy.

For two decades, the Republican Party’s platforms from 1996 through 2016 were usually in the neighborhood of 30,000-40,000 words. But in 2020, the GOP punted on having a platform entirely, merely issuing a short statement that basically said “we believe in whatever Mr. Trump demands we believe.”

They were rightly mocked for that, so they’ve gone through the motions and issued something they’re claiming is a real platform, but it’s honestly not. It’s just sixteen pages long, and that’s counting these pages.

The entire thing is just thirteen pages of text, so I encourage you to read it all during the next commercial break.

But more than that, I seriously encourage you to read the real Republican platform, the now infamous Project 2025 document that has been crafted by Trump’s handlers at the Heritage Foundation. It’s currently still available on their website, but given how much heat it’s generating, they might expunge it soon. Either way, you can access a PDF of it here.

Unlike the haiku-like brevity of the thirteen pages in the official party platform, the right-wing blueprint that Republicans will actually be using runs to nearly 900 pages in length. Unlike the vague hand-waving and sloganeering of the GOP document, the Project 2025 text goes really deep on the details, and shows with incredible frankness just what they’re going to do.

I strongly, strongly, strongly encourage you to search through the document for any issues you care about and for any places you care about too, because I guarantee you there’s something in there that will scare the ever-loving shit out of your family, your friends and your neighbors who might be on the fence about this election. A lot of the success of Trumpism comes from the assumption that the bad things are going to happen to Other People in Other Places, but this document quite clearly shows that’s not the case.

They’re coming for public schools. They’re coming for veterans. They’re coming for the national parks. They’re coming for climate change mitigation. They’re coming for contraception and reproductive health care. And on and on.

These changes will impact the places you live. It’ll impact Chicago. It’ll impact Michigan. It’ll impact North Carolina. And on and on.

Many of these stories focusing on a particular issue or a particular place are out there and ready to share. But if you see that something’s missing? Write it up yourself.

This is what the Republicans are planning to do. They are not hiding it, though as the spotlight intensifies, they’re sort of trying to run from it. As the saying goes, a hit dog hollers and the furious backtracking from this document only shows even they know this is an anvil around their candidates’ necks.

Don’t let them run from it and don’t let them hide it with gauzy soundbites and a credulous media who insists that they don’t really mean it. The villain in the movie has issued a lengthy monologue about their plans for global destruction, and we need to be sure every single voter has heard it.

It’s a lot better use of your time than panicking, I’ll tell you that.