I never entirely agreed with Republican principles as I understood them.
When I was a toddler, they were the party of civil rights. That was the main reason my grandparent and parents were enthusiastic Republicans, at least at that time. I would have been as well, had they allowed twelve year old kids to vote.
The libertarian wing of the party had taken hold by the time I was a teenager. It was called classic conservatism in those days. The emphasis was on militant balancing of the federal budget, limited government, and elimination of the social safety net. The exaggerated embrace of states’ rights was part of the same ideological package. So was your right to sell your house to whomever you wanted – or to refuse to sell to anyone you disliked for any reason.
The flirtation with what was euphemistically called “racial conservatism” seems inevitable in retrospect. White racial resentment of black progress spilled into anger at any hint that somewhere, somehow, some undeserving black person might be getting away with something.
What were classic conservatives to do? Turn away those who wanted many of the same things, but for the wrong reasons?
The surrender to temptation came in increments.
Ideological conservatives would not tolerate racist talk, but they often did deny that racism existed, except in very rare cases. This allowed many to condemn civil rights agitators for stirring up trouble over imaginary wrongs. Racism was an artifact from the past, a mere rhetorical cudgel: an unfair weapon in a contrived war of words.
Throughout it all, conservatives made valiant efforts to advance their clear principles. Until those principles eroded, melted away by the alliance many denied.
Every four years political parties have reaffirmed the values by which their existence is justified. Political platforms are usually disregarded by political campaigns and ignored by office holders between elections. But they are valuable within themselves. They are a mechanism by which political parties affirm to the faithful that they stand for something, and that the something for which they stand is worth fighting for, is worth voting for.
This year has been a special year in that regard. We watched as the slow erosion became a meltdown.
The party of fiscal responsibility became one in which taxes are slashed for the wealthiest while expenses are driven upward.
The party of limited government puts children in cages and clubs protesters for the sake of presidential photo ops.
The party of civil rights has completed the process of repudiation even of the pretense. Voter suppression and the violation of basic liberties is now very much in the open. Democracy itself is seen as a partisan issue.
Many of us have waited with curiosity, wondering what sort of alternate facts, what manner of pretzel logic, would be shone in this year’s quadrennial statement of principle. And now we have an implicit acknowledgment, unexpected but truthful after a fashion. The statement of principles, the Republican platform, has been reduced to this: We don’t know what Republicans stand for, and we don’t know who to ask.
The RNC has unanimously voted to forego the Convention Committee on Platform, in appreciation of the fact that it did not want a small contingent of delegates formulating a new platform without the breadth of perspectives within the ever-growing Republican movement;
The Republican National Committee (RNC) (pdf)
You don’t need a decoder ring this year. There are no dog-whistles in that sentence.
What is on the list of Republican principles? What do they stand for?
According to Republicans:
Nothing we know of.
Nothing at all.