The Command Post - 2004 US Presidential Election - "GOP Platform Draft Turns Left"

August 26, 2004

New York | "GOP Platform Draft Turns Left"

From the 8/27/04 NYT’s “Committee Adopts Draft; Some Grumble”

…Yesterday morning, leaders of the platform committee fought to fend off a last-ditch effort by conservatives to challenge a plank supporting Mr. Bush’s proposal for a “guest worker” program that would be open to some currently illegal immigrants, which some conservatives denounce as a form of amnesty.
In an effort to counter the president’s plan, conservatives proposed adding a call for a federal law to encourage law enforcement agencies to collaborate with immigration officials to expel illegal aliens.

But Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, who heads the platform committee, sent the amendment to be merged with a similar, less strident proposal, and the two were revised to urge continued cooperation “in securing our borders to prevent illegal entry.” It passed decisively.

Richard Lessner, executive director of the American Conservative Union, called the language weak. The issue, he said, “is a place where the president is out of step with his base, which is why the president does not want any discussion of it here.”

From the 8/26/04 NYT report “Conservatives Grumble on Planks Reflecting Bush Agenda”:

In a statement, Richard Lessner, executive director of the American Conservative Union, called the platform “a bland and uninspiring document” that lacked “solid conservative meat.” Although most conservatives enthusiastically support the lengthy platform section on fighting terrorism, Mr. Lessner said, its “open-ended commitment” to keeping troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is troubling.
His harshest criticism fell on President Bush’s plan for the new temporary worker program.

“This unfortunate initiative allows those who enter America illegally to become legal residents and apply for citizenship,” he said. “This idea was D.O.A. among conservatives when the president first broached it, and it is still offensive.”

…In a private e-mail message that circulated among conservatives at the platform hearings and on Capitol Hill, Paul S. Teller, legislative director of the conservative House Republican Study Committee, forwarded Mr. Lessner’s statement, adding:

“It confirms, as was made so clear to me during the time of President Reagan’s funeral and laying in state, that President Bush has no broad vision - and certainly no conservative vision - for the United States of America. All he has is a random assortment of policy prescriptions, many of which contradict one another. And let’s not forget his primary goal on federal spending, to cut the deficit in half in five years. Wowwee.”

See also the 8/26/04 Washington Times report “Bush team keeps conservative agenda in check.”

The 8/24/04 Washington Times has excerpts from the section dealing with immigration:

The draft’s immigration section, titled “Supporting Humane and Legal Immigration,” backs the president’s case for giving some illegal aliens temporary legal status under a guest-worker program, a position vehemently opposed by immigration-control forces in the party.
“A growing economy requires a growing number of workers, and President Bush has proposed a new temporary workers program to match willing foreign workers with willing U.S. employers, when no Americans can be found to fill the jobs…

[It says] flatly that the proposal “does not grant amnesty, which we oppose, because it would have the effect of encouraging illegal immigration and would give an unfair advantage to those who have broken our laws.”

See also “Splintered Plank: The White House spins and misses on immigration” and this article about Zell Miller.

You can provide the GOP feedback on the platform using this form.

UPDATE: Yes, as spotted by keen-eyed commentator dsmtoday, the original first excerpt that was here was from the NewsMax article “GOP Platform Draft Turns Left” and that article was from 2000. And, no, that was not intentional. So, I added the two more up-to-date NYT articles in place of the NewsMax article.

Posted by Lonewacko at August 26, 2004 03:34 PM | TrackBack

Comments

Hey wait a minute! I thought the Democrats were the party that pandered to minorities around election time. Now every Bush in the Pueblo is out-PCing the race hustling poverty pimps of the Democrat party.

First this —> George P Bush bashes INS during Mexico trip

“Speaking in a mix of English and sometimes-halting Spanish, George P. Bush said his uncle was not to blame for the gun policy, which has angered Mexicans. He instead blamed it on ‘some local INS guy who’s trying to be tough, act macho.’”
Bush went further in defaming the character of our Border Patrol agents and their supervisors: “If there has been American approval for this policy, that is reprehensible,” George P. Bush said of the guns, essentially paintball projectiles filled with chile powder. “It’s kind of barbarous.”

and now the GOP platform is leaning left like Bill Clinton’s …. wife. It’s enough to make Hillary blush.

You are going to have to do better than pandering before an election if you want the rainbow vote mi amigos.

Posted by: capitano at August 26, 2004 04:19 PM

Once the D’s and R’s switched places wrt the Deficit, the entire political spectrum was in chaos.

But don’t let anyone fool you — Borrow & Spend is a far worse philosophy than Tax & Spend. B&S is a fraud on the body politic, to be paid off not by the present Voting Generation, but by future generations who can’t vote today.

Posted by: Don at August 26, 2004 04:45 PM

Speaking as an ex-Democrat, most of this sounds like pretty good news to me. I’m a big proponent of public education. Hell, I’d be in favor of federalizing the public schools entirely, but I’m kind of a nut when it comes to education. I’m also the first one to admit that I don’t have the foggiest idea how any of it is supposed to actually work. I just think it’s a good idea.

I don’t see how we could get rid of the Department of Energy. It does too much important stuff related to nuclear power and to counter-proliferation.

I think the issue of breast-versus-prostate cancer is that there’s still a detection gap. We’ve come a long way from the days when you couldn’t say “mammogram” in polite company, but it’s still important to education women about screening for early detection. As I understand it, most prostate cancers are already caught during the early stages, and are treated accordingly. I won’t swear to that, but I believe I’ve read something to that effect.

And so on. I’m not going to get all up-in-arms about any of this stuff, because point-by-point most of it sounds pretty okay to me.

But hey, if there’s something in there you’re not happy with, write letters! Change public opinion among your fellow Republicans. That’s how the system is supposed to work.

Posted by: Jeff Harrell at August 26, 2004 05:35 PM

Polling Report has the Fox News, Gallup and LA Times polls that came out today summarized at this link:

http://www.pollingreport.com/wh04gen.htm

Posted by: steve at August 26, 2004 06:03 PM

Gack!….Don is right!

Posted by: wlpeak at August 26, 2004 08:16 PM

I am not impressed with the theory that the Republican platform represents a move to the left. NewsMax is not what I would call an unbiased source. Here is what the AP said:

In Republican platform deliberations, moderates made much of the noise but conservatives proposed most of the amendments.

Religious activists and like-minded delegates tried over two days and one night of hearings to tug an already conservative document farther to the right.

At their urging, the party went beyond its unprecedented call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to go on record, too, as opposing all legal recognition of gay unions, including shared employee benefits.

They fell short in other areas, failing to put the party behind a complete ban on stem cell research, alter leading principles on immigration or persuade the GOP to seek the elimination of family-planning programs for teens.

Despite a substantial conservative presence on the 110-member platform committee, the imperative was to avoid letting the platform go far off track from the policies President Bush is taking into the election.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/9498492.htm

Posted by: Forrest at August 26, 2004 08:18 PM

This year’s preliminary platform shows a turn to the left from the conservative 1996 platform on many issues…

[soapbox]

1996? They mean the same 1996 that the Republicans nominated one of the most interesting and, yes, progressive tickets in their history only to send four out of five independents screaming into the arms of Bill Clinton when the Blue Meanies wrecked the convention with all of their fear and loathing? That 1996?

I suggest to Republicans that they not walk away from the Paleo-conservatives in their midst, but rather run away, as fast as they can. I mean, I’m anti-abortion as well, but I’m just not stupid enough to believe that a prohibition on abortion is going to result in fewer abortions, much less a more virtuous society, but rather MORE dead babies, MORE dead mothers and several new commodities for coke dealers to diversify into.

And theirs positions on immigration and migrant labor is simply anti-capitalist: the freedom of human capital to cross borders in an orderly way is every bit as important as the freedom of money and goods to do the same. And by the way, exactly who appointed paleo-conservatives the Great White Defenders of the Welfare State for heaven’s sakes???

If the Gary Bauers of the party don’t like it, let them go vote for Kerry, or form their own version of Hezbollah or something, instead of guaranteeing the GOP political irrelevence by alienating the independents whom sympathize with most conservative positions but will never, ever, ever, under any circumstances, stomach, much less support, the religious right’s social authoritarianism.

[/soapbox]

:jackson

Posted by: jackson zed at August 26, 2004 08:26 PM

Geesh…what’ve read so far isn’t too very impressive. Granted it’s Newsmax and AP. Will have to spend some more time on the whole thing but not tonight. For tonight I will only say that we must protect our borders and this tactic of (not REALLY amnesty)Amnesty is for the birds! one of these “Guest-Workers” or whatever the hades he’s gonna call them could bring trouble to us.

I’m no Pat Buchanan here…if Mexican Nationals wish to immigrate to the US then PLEASE do so! Last I checked there is no INS office in the middle of the Rio Grande however. Just follow the friggin rules guys!

Mr. President, I love ya to death, but sending the message “once yer in…YER IN” is no better than just granting them Amnesty now and cleaning up the blood and body parts later.

Posted by: Wayne Fielder at August 26, 2004 10:29 PM

I am not impressed with the theory that the Republican platform represents a move to the left. NewsMax is not what I would call an unbiased source. Here is what the AP said.

Thanks for that excerpt from the non-biased AP.

Anyhoo, Bush’s immigration policy is quite “left.” It amounts to something near Open Borders. Here’s just a few of the data points I could provide:

1. See George P. Bush’s comments about the Border Patrol linked above. Read his comments, pretending for the moment that you’re a BP agent. And, note that GPB’s comments followed complaints by Mexico by 8 days, and they’re now threatening to sue us.

2. In the first five months of this year, just one company in the whole U.S. was fined for immigration violations.

3. According to the CIS, illegal immigration costs us $10 billion/year. If those illegal aliens were legalized, it would rise to $29 billion/year.

4. Three Texas congressmen have complained about the possibility of terrorists coming over the border due to lax border control. They’ve also complained about releasing OTMs (Other-Than-Mexicans) who are caught sneaking over the border due to lack of jail space. Some of those OTMs are from countries like Iran, Iraq, and Syria.

5. I’m not sure of its current status, but TX Cngmn Culberson tried to prevent banks from accepting Mexico’s Matricula Consular cards. The FBI has declared those cards a security risk. Guess what? The Bush administration supported the use of the cards.

6. Minor immigration sweeps in SoCal were stopped after Mexico and a Mexican-American cngmn complained. That’s despite the DHS having received thousands of calls and emails from American citizens in support of the sweeps.

I could go on, but consider this quote from the 9/11 staff report:

…abuse of the immigration system and a lack of interior immigration enforcement were unwittingly working together to support terrorist activity…

We apparently haven’t learned our lesson. Or, at least our current leaders haven’t.

On the slightly saner side, while Kerry has an amnesty plan even worse in some ways than Bush’s, he’s come out against driver’s licenses for illegal aliens and Hillary Clinton said at the DNC that we need to “secure our borders.”

Supposedly Bush is the one who’s going to keep us all safe. If the Dems got smart they would point out how false that is.

Posted by: Lonewacko at August 27, 2004 12:16 AM

Just curious - any of you notice that the first article was from the year *2000*???

Posted by: dsmtoday at August 27, 2004 01:22 AM

dsmtoday -

Good eye!

Posted by: Jim at August 27, 2004 12:27 PM

“Just curious - any of you notice that the first article was from the year *2000*???”

I corrected it, and replaced the original first excerpt from NewsMax with two from the NYT and one from the WashTimes.

The mistake was not intentional, but based on the similarities of the NewsMax article to the three articles that replaced it, it’s easy to see how even someone such as I could make this mistake.

Posted by: Lonewacko at August 27, 2004 11:27 PM