Though he hasn’t mentioned the 2016 GOP platform–which is in the process of being written–Donald Trump has quite clearly decided to let the right-wing evangelicals put whatever ridiculous planks strike their fancy into the document.
A draft of the platform was shared with members of the platform committee Sunday evening, and you probably won’t be the least bit surprised to learn that it retains the party’s no-exceptions anti-abortion position intact and also continues the party’s strident opposition to marriage equality.
Much like Mitt Romney in 2012, Trump seems determined to remain distanced from any platform fights, and it appears he is completely comfortable with the Republican Party drifting even further to the far right. Trump, after all, said just yesterday that he is the “law and order candidate” in this election, borrowing a phrase from the Richard Nixon, the only person who has ever had to resign the Oval Office for high crimes and misdemeanors.
Take a look at some of the extremists who currently populate the GOP platform committee and are writing what may well wind up being the most draconian platform since the ones drafted by the Nazis:
- Tony Perkins, the head of the intensely anti-gay and anti-choice Family Research Council. Perkins said publicly that his support for Trump’s nomination is predicated on a platform that does not include any “watering down” of language on social issues.
- David Barton, the self-appointed “historian” whose Christian-nation ideology infects much of the Religious Right and the GOP.
- James Bopp, a far-right lawyer who has led legal challenges on campaign finance laws and has also represented anti-abortion and anti-equality groups. In 2012, Bopp vehemently opposed a GOP delegate’s proposal that the party recognize civil unions, which Bopp declared were “counterfeit marriage.”
The New York Times also found the following right-wing lugnuts on the platform committee:
“Cynthia Dunbar of Virginia, who has compared the gay rights movement to Nazism. Hardy Billington, a committee member from Missouri, placed an ad in a local paper asserting that homosexuality kills people at two to three times the rate of smoking. And Mary Frances Forrester of North Carolina has claimed that the “homosexual agenda is trying to change the course of Western civilization.”
With extremists such as these asshats writing the 2016 platform, don’t be surprised if they even manage to insert a line or two about making Trump emperor and the Bible the only book allowed in public libraries. These people are a danger to the nation, same as Trump.
h/t Right Wing Watch
Featured Image Via Trump 2016
