Can a party with no platform lead a state
The Republican Party has no platform. That’s not the first line of a dumb political joke. It is a statement of fact.
Last month I read that the Republican National Committee’s platform this year is, literally, just this: “The Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America- first agenda; and that the 2020 Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention.” Knowing that the Republican Party has written and published a platform every four years since 1856, 20 years before Colorado even became a state, I wondered if our own Republicans took it upon themselves to stand for any specific positions on any specific issues in defiance of the Trump- first national GOP.
Lo and behold, the Colorado Republican Party’s platform is a link to the 2016 national Republican party platform. The 2016 GOP had positions on homeownership, international trade, the national electric grid, administrative law, you name it. The document is over 60 pages long, and party activists no doubt put real thought and work into its creation, editing, writing, publishing, and promotion.
Now, I’m not going to tell you that a party platform is a criticallyimportant document that elected officials follow closely. Because it’s not. But without some sort of platform on which to base decisions, an organization fundamentally has no reason for existing. It would be like opening a business for the purpose of “doing business.”
By contrast, the Colorado Democratic Party’s 2020 platform is over 20 pages long, and has detailed positions the party has taken on every issue from the economy to social justice, transportation to labor, education, and energy. They even have a very specific set of positions on the media’s role in democracy, and what the party’s positions are on a free press. It’s all there in black and blue and white and from what I can tell, 10 point font.
The Libertarian Party of Colorado has stated positions for the 2020 election on everything from sovereign immunity to the safety clause used in state legislation to enact it immediately upon signature of the governor.
Colorado’s newest political party, the Unity Party of Colorado,
states that their platform is “synonymous with the Unity Party of America platform” which is clearly articulated on their website, where they endorse a balanced budget amendment, eliminating the federal income tax, and congressional and judicial term limits among plenty of other issues.
Despite the fact that the GOP is nearly completely out of power at the state level here in Colorado, they currently control the White House and the U. S. Senate. So, without a platform more descriptive than to “enthusiastically support the President’s America- first agenda,” how can first- time voters, new Americans, and those who have decided to vote in this critical election but have lives outside of politics know what the party stands for? Read Donald Trump’s tweets?
The fact that the second- largest political party in Colorado has no platform actually begins to make quite a bit of sense when you examine the recent political activities of the Colorado Republican Party over the past few years, but especially since their categorical drubbing in the Democratic wave of 2018. With no power in the legislature, the state GOP turned instead to recall elections that allowed opportunists to fleece gullible partisans into emptying their wallets in order to try to oust Democrats. None of the recalls even qualified for the ballot, in fact, only four signatures were ever turned into the Secretary of State for validation.
Of course, yet another recall attempt against Gov. Jared Polis was announced this week, with a general election less than 50 days away. Gov. Polis currently enjoys a 57% approval rating so this effort, like the others before it, has absolutely no chance of either qualifying or succeeding.
Indeed, the would- be recallers don’t even have a candidate they would run against Gov. Polis if they were somehow successful in their effort, which pretty well sums up the whole thing.
It is therefore no surprise that someone like Donald Trump has himself become the Alpha and Omega for the Colorado and national Republican Party. After all, as the old saying goes, those who stand for nothing will fall for anything.