Donald Trump is the official Republican nominee for the presidency of the United States, and the party has released its platform for 2016 – a Ronald Reagan-themed rollercoaster ride through an American dreamland of national exceptionalism and lost glory. Its core narrative is one where all the Democrats are traitors who have betrayed the country and emboldened its traditional nemeses, one that is familiar to anyone who has watched the party’s shift to the lunatic right fringe in the post-George W. Bush era. The GOP’s world view is a snapshot of a country that is more polarised than ever before, with the political middle ground a faded memory.
The platform is often contradictory, at times surreal, filled with wild generalisations, ad hominem attacks on public figures, straw men and strangely specific provisions on electromagnetic pulses, broadband and wolves – in essence, it is a Trump platform through and through.
The Republican platform is heavy on graft and grit, and in particular, “vigor” [vigour, in English]. Despite steadily improving employment numbers under the Obama administration, and the signs that the economy is finally recovering from the financial crisis, the Republicans say that the current government has driven the country to “lows last seen two generations ago before President Reagan was elected in 1980”. Under the Democrats, the platform states, America is following a “false gospel of America’s diminishment and retreat”.
Tax: The Republican Party doesn’t like tax. In fact, they say that they “consider the establishment of a pro-growth tax code a moral imperative”. They promise to lower taxes wherever they create a disincentive to investment, and to repeal the 16th amendment to the constitution, which allows the federal government to levy income tax.
This is all, of course, in service of creating a fairer, more inclusive and equitable society – in perhaps the least Trump-like sentence imaginable, the platform says: “We will not divide the American people into winners and losers.” They may have a point. According to the Tax Justice Network, the US’s lowest-income taxpayers pay an average state rate of tax of 10.9 per cent. The top 1 per cent pay 5.4 per cent.
Trade: In 1984, then-President Ronald Reagan, facing flagging support at home, went to China to boost his foreign policy credentials and to showcase the burgeoning economic relationship between the two countries. Donald Trump, the Gipper’s self-declared successor, isn’t quite so keen on Beijing, and his party doctrine is essentially: love Reagan, hate China. The 2016 platform rails against China’s trade policy and its “currency manipulation”.
The alternative, the GOP says, is a new, “multilateral agreement amongst nations committed to the principles of open markets, in which free trade will truly be fair for all concerned.” Of course, in the spirit of togetherness and shared values, those trade deals should “put America first”. They even have a snappy name for this new world order: the Reagan Economic Zone, of course.
Regulation: Rules are for losers. The financial crisis of 2008-2009 was, in the new Republican world view, the fault of government housing policy, and those dastardly government types merely used it as an excuse to pass anti-business legislation, such as the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, otherwise known as Dodd-Frank. This enforces petty rules, such as demanding transparency in the derivatives market – those tools dubbed “financial weapons of mass destruction” by legendary investor Warren Buffett – and regulating the rating agencies, who allowed sub-prime mortgages to be sold as investment-grade products.
Dodd-Frank, the GOP says, is “the Democrats’ legislative Godzilla”; the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created by the act in order to monitor financial markets, was “deliberately designed to be a rogue agency” that must be abolished.
Technology: Farmers need broadband; American needs to keep going into space.
The Fed: Reagan! The US abandoned the gold standard – pegging the dollar to the price of gold – in 1971, allowing the currency to float freely. Although the GOP platform doesn’t explicitly call for the return of the gold standard, it does say that Reagan “established a commission to consider the feasibility of a metallic basis for US currency”. Which is reason enough.
Workers’ rights: Strict labour laws are a bar on growth, according to the 2016 platform, which uses the word “flexibility” more often than brochure for a yoga studio.
God-given, natural, inalienable: not Donald Trump’s hair, but the rights of the American people. The Republican Party – don’t laugh – “denounces bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism, ethnic prejudice and religious intolerance… Our ranks include Americans from every faith and tradition, and we respect the right of each American to follow his or her deeply held beliefs.” Good to put that to bed, because some people have been asking questions.
As well as mentioning God – a lot – the Republicans felt that it was necessary to stress that the government’s actions must “conform to the Constitution’s original meaning as understood at the time the language was adopted.” That is, 1788, when people still had slaves, smallpox and muskets.
The judiciary: America’s judiciary is in crisis. The Supreme Court needs to be independent, and in sole service of the constitution. Which is why its justices must be appointed by Donald Trump.
Congress: Congress is supposed to be in charge, so no one else gets a say in how laws get written.
Marriage: In 2015, a landmark case in the Supreme Court, Obergefell vs. Hodges, held in a 5-4 decision that the right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by the constitution. This means, according to the GOP, that: “five unelected lawyers robbed 320 million Americans of their legitimate constitutional authority to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”
The party does not go so far as to say it will challenge that ruling, however. But then, with an estimated 400,000 same-sex marriages in the US, it is hard to say you’re pro-family if you make all those people get divorced.
Religion: As Thomas Jefferson said: “No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.” The 2016 platform decries “ongoing 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”, and says that the GOP supports laws that make sure that religious individuals don’t have to “check their religious beliefs at the door”.
This must all come as a relief to those people of faith who have laboured under the fear that a Trump administration would have them registered and interrogated about the depth of their beliefs. And for Sajid Tarar, the either ballsy or seriously misguided founder of American Muslims for Trump, who said a prayer at the Republican National Convention, over chants of “No Islam”.
Guns: More. Not less.
Privacy: No surveillance, except on the borders.
Abortion: The GOP supports the right to choose… the judges that will tell you that you can’t have an abortion.
America’s disenfranchised coal miners have become a surrogate for America’s battle against modernity, as the value of the product of their labour collapses on world markets and is demonised for its contribution to pollution and climate change. The campaign trail has always featured candidates chowing down on cheesesteaks filled with all-natural cheese in a can, bloated GM corn or hotdogs made with All-American spray-recovered cow spleen; now the hopefuls may have to be pictured holding a chunk of the Greatest Coal on Earth, as the rest of the world fights to give up the black stuff.
Food: The Republican Party is against the mandatory labelling of food, including of GM food. Which means we may never know what really goes into Trump Wine.
Energy: “The Democratic Party does not understand that coal is an abundant, clean, affordable, reliable domestic energy resource. Those who mine it and their families should be protected from the Democratic Party’s radical anti-coal agenda.”
Wildlife: The GOP supports conservation of species, but infers on page 22 of its platform that it’s cool to hunt grey wolves to extinction in any part of the country, as long as there are some left somewhere.
Climate change: Nope.
Really, climate change: The world keeps heating up. The last 12 months have seen records battered down like protestors at a Trump rally. But thankfully, world leaders got together in December 2015 to agree new targets to try to prevent a cataclysm. However, to support the UN in its bid to stop the planet burning would be illegal, according to the GOP. Why? Palestine. The 1994 Foreign Relations Authorisation Act prohibits the US government from funding any UN organisation that grants Palestinians membership as a state. So no money for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or for the Green Climate Fund.
Immigration was, unsurprisingly, centre stage at the Republican National Convention, and the platform repeats several of Trump’s previous promises, including the eye-catching wall between the US and Mexico. Aside from that, there are relatively few details on social policy, beyond the obvious privatisation of healthcare and education spending. Instead, the document sticks to the Trump playbook, and focuses on attacking the existing government and its ongoing plot to take over America.
The wall: Would a trench do, Donald? The flagship policy of the Trump campaign, the construction of a wall all the way along the southern border – though Canada, you’re next – is now written into the official Republican platform. It “must cover the entirety of the southern border and must be sufficient to stop both vehicular and pedestrian traffic” because, well, it’s a wall. There is no mention of Mexico being compelled to pay for it, which was a feature of The Donald’s earlier outbursts.
As comic as the idea of building this impossible barrier is, the Convention hosted a number of speakers who talked about the violence they and their families have suffered at the hands of “illegal migrants”, ramping up the rhetoric and demonisation of a large segment of American society. The platform itself decries the 2009 and 2014 amnesties on undocumented workers, using similarly emotive language:
“With all our fellow citizens, we have watched, in anger and disgust, the mocking of our immigration laws by a president who made himself superior to the will of the nation. We stand with the victims of his policies, especially the families of murdered innocents.”
The platform does have a caveat saying that legal immigrants are fine – as long as they serve in the military or as first responders, cleaning up America’s mess at home and abroad. There is also a long and detailed “you’re alright mate” to Native Americans, who perhaps wish they had thought of all this first time around.
Crime and policing: The backdrop to the RNC has been a severe challenge to America’s civic order, marked by continuing tension between black communities and law enforcement, which has spilled over into ‘lone wolf’ gunmen attacking police officers. The GOP’s platform says that the police have been politicised and subjected to a “campaign of harassment” by the Attorney General. The Republicans are seeking to lay the blame for the current conflict in the US at the door of the president, saying:
“The next president must restore the public’s trust in law enforcement and civil order by first adhering to the rule of law himself. Additionally, the next president must not sow seeds of division and distrust between the police and the people they have sworn to serve and protect.”
The IRS: An “attack dog” chasing down churches, anti-abortion charities and other defenders of liberty.
Health: Less money for Medicare and Medicaid “before they consume most of the federal budget, including national defence”.
We live in dangerous times, the GOP says, and the US is in the middle of a national security crisis. “In all of our country’s history, there is no parallel to what President Obama and his former Secretary of State have done to weaken our nation.”
Foreign affairs looks like a natural area of weakness for Trump, but offers an opportunity to lay into Hillary Clinton for her time as the US’s top international negotiator, and to engage in some dick-swinging about the size of the toys he is going to buy for the military. The GOP’s narrative is that the US military, by far the best funded in the world, is critically weak and unable to retain its “exceptionalism”.
Defence: There are some glaring discrepancies between the platform and what Trump himself has said. The official policy says: “The leadership of the Democratic Party, both those in office and those who seek it, no longer see America as a force for good in the world. They do not stand by allies or stand strong against our foes.”
Trump himself, though, has said that he may not actually leap to the aid of the Baltic States – members of NATO – should Russia invade them, and has suggested he might pull troops out of South Korea, where they have long been posted as a bulwark against the threat of an invasion from the North.
Middle East: The GOP considers the historic rapprochement and nuclear deal with Iran to be “ruinous” and “impotent grandstanding”, and will not honour it. Republican policy on the wider Middle East is a tangled mélange where the so-called Islamic State, Hezbollah and Iran are interchangeable, while support for Israel is “unequivocal”.
Asia: Following on from Trump’s promise to label China a “currency manipulator” and to levy huge taxes on its exports, the Republican platform is unsurprisingly critical of China’s “return to Maoism”, referencing the erosion of rights and Hong Kong’s loss of autonomy. Claims that the Obama administration has “emboldened” the Chinese government in the South China Sea, however, seem far-fetched in the context of an increasingly tense stand-off between the US, China and ASEAN nations in the region.
Europe: Thanks for helping out in Afghanistan and Iraq, but could you spare a dime? The GOP policy on Europe starts out with a call for European nations to spend more to protect themselves in their own backyard, but also warns Russia against more aggression on its borders.
The Americas: About that wall… “Family, language, culture, environment, and trade link us closely with both Canada and Mexico,” the platform says, continuing, almost beyond parody: “The Mexican people deserve our assistance as they bravely resist the drug cartels that traffic in death on both sides of our border. Their rich cultural and religious heritage, shared by many millions of our fellow citizens, should foster greater understanding and cooperation between our countries.”
Further afield, the platform continues on the track that the Democrats have given a leg up to the US’s enemies, turning Venezuela into “an Iranian outpost threatening Central America, and a safe haven for the agents of Hezbollah”. The Obama administration’s opening up to Cuba was “a shameful accommodation to the demands of its tyrants. It will only strengthen their military dictatorship.”
Africa: Africa gets a whole two paragraphs, under the heading “The Promise and the Challenge”, although ‘the promise’ only really gets one sentence, most of the rest being a litany of the continent’s challenges with Aids, malaria and terrorism. The Africa section is also the only mention in the entire document of the last Republican president, George W. Bush, whose support for PEPFAR and the Global Fund, two large health initiatives, won him many friends on the continent.
International organisations: America reserves the right to pick and choose which international obligations and organisations it participates in. This has long been a bipartisan consensus.
Foreign aid: The GOP’s position is: “a good idea, as long as we get something back.”
Cyber security: In a passage that reads like the blurb from a Tom Clancy thriller, the GOP asserts that Russia and China are attacking the US online, and: “We must stop playing defence and go on offence to avoid the cyber-equivalent of Pearl Harbour”.
EM pulse: In the straight-to-the-bargain-bucket sequel to ‘Cyber Pearl Harbour’, an electromagnetic pulse is detonated over the US by a nuclear-armed North Korea, knocking out the electrical grid. Under the Republicans, this could never happen.
