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HUSSON – Meeting at their first personal convention in 2018, Texas Republicans on Saturday acted on a number of resolutions and proposed changes to the platform to move their party even further to the right. They approved measures declaring President Joe Biden “not legitimately elected” and accusing Senator John Cornin of engaging in bipartisan arms talks. They also voted for a platform that declares homosexuality an “abnormal lifestyle choice” and calls on Texas students to be taught to “learn about the humanity of the unborn child.”
The action closed a convention that stressed how strongly the party’s most active and vocal members strongly oppose compromising with Democrats or moderating social positions, although the state has become more diverse and Republican margins in statewide elections have narrowed slightly in recent years. .
The votes in the platform were gathered at the end of the party’s three-day convention, in which party activists moved to add many elements to their official platform. When the convention ended, two separate sets of ballots were collected, one allowing delegates to choose from eight legislative priorities and the other allowing delegates to vote on 275 platforms. They will now have to be counted and certified in Austin, but it is rare for a board to be rejected, according to party spokesman James Wesolek.
The convention reinforced the extent to which the baseless allegations of former President Donald J. Trump’s stolen election continues to resonate with the party’s loyalists – although his allegations have been repeatedly refuted, including by many of his former aides, and after a week of televised hearings about Trump supporters storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Cornin’s denunciation was a remarkable rebuke for a Republican who has served in the Senate since 2002. The hall at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston was filled with whistles on Friday as he tried to explain legislation that would allow minors to enroll. be included in past checks on arms buyers under the age of 21 and promote red flag laws that would facilitate the removal of weapons from potentially dangerous people, along with more funding for school safety and mental health.
Meanwhile, a party platform vote on Saturday by some 5,100 congressional delegates will say those under 21 are “likely to have to defend themselves” and may need to buy weapons quickly “in emergencies such as riots.” . He would also say that red flag laws violate the due process of people who have not been convicted of a crime.
About 9,600 delegates and deputies were eligible to attend; organizers said turnout was healthy.
The new platform will require:
- Requiring Texas students to “learn about the humanity of the unborn child,” including teaching that life begins with fertilization and requiring students to listen live to ultrasounds of pregnant fetuses.
- Amendment to the Texas Constitution to remove the power of the legislature “to regulate the carrying of weapons in order to prevent crime.”
- Treating homosexuality as an “abnormal lifestyle choice”, a language that was not included in party platforms in 2018 or 2020.
- Adopting gender identity disorder as a “genuine and extremely rare metal health condition” requiring official documents to adhere to “biological sex” and allowing civil sanctions and monetary compensation to “de-transitional” people who have undergone gender-based surgery , which the platform calls a form of medical error.
- Amend the US Constitution to set the number of Supreme Court justices at nine and repeal the 16th Amendment of 1913, which created the federal income tax.
- Ensuring “freedom of travel” in opposition to Biden’s clean energy plan and “California-style anti-driver policies”, including efforts to reverse lanes for pedestrians, cyclists and public transport.
- Declaring “all businesses and jobs a fundamental and fundamental right,” a response to COVID-19 mandates from Texas cities requiring customers to wear masks and limiting working hours.
- Eliminate the Federal Reserve, the national central bank, and guarantee the right to use alternatives to money, including cryptocurrencies.
Not every far-right proposal was advanced. Party Chairman Matt Rinaldi ruled that the proposal to protect the due process of those who revolted in the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and to “reject the story” that the riot was a riot was out of order and not can be voted.
Taken together, the new regulations would represent a change even further to the right for the Republican Party of Texas, formerly known as the Party of Presidents George W. Bush and his son George W. Bush. Land Commissioner George P. Bush, grandson and nephew of the two presidents, was easily defeated last month in a race against Attorney General Ken Paxton, an arch-conservative who has filed a lawsuit to challenge the outcome of the 2020 election and persuade voters. that he is the truer Loyalist of Trump.
Party platforms are mission declarations rather than legal doctrines, and in Texas they have long reflected the views of the party’s most activist wings. Republican-elected officials are not required to adhere to them, and party activists are sometimes disappointed that some parts of their platform and legislative priorities have not become law, despite full republican control over the state government.
But the platforms are broad indicators of the mood of the most active Republican voters – those who dominate the party’s primary elections. Republicans have controlled every state office in Texas since 1999 and both houses of the legislature since 2003, so the wishes of the party’s populist, pro-Trump base inevitably affect the actions taken in Austin.
“The platform is largely symbolic, but important as a measure of ideological drift,” said Brandon Rottinghouse, a political scientist at the University of Houston. “Party platforms are often used as a stick in party primary elections. A more muscular ideological platform ultimately leads to a more conservative legislature, as contenders reject more moderate members. “
The convention was notable for the relatively low profile of senior officials. Gov. Greg Abbott, who is running for a third term in the November election, appeared only at a reception on Thursday on the sidelines of Congress. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who effectively controls the state Senate, addressed Congress, but House Speaker Dade Phelan spoke only at noon, not in front of the majority of delegates.
The tension in the party at times became personal. A video posted online shows far-right activists physically addressing US spokesman Dan Crenshaw, calling the conservative Republican “McCain’s blindfold” for his criticism of Russia. The group included self-identified Proud Boys and Alex Stein, a social media activist from North Texas. A veteran of the Navy seals, Crenshaw lost his right eye to a bomb in Afghanistan.
“A more aggressive party platform sends a clear message to politicians about where the base is going,” Rottinghouse said. “Donald Trump radicalized the party and accelerated demands from the base. Now there are simply no restrictions on what the base can ask for. “
Mark P. Jones, a political scientist at Rice University, said the 2022 platform shows how brave hardline right-wing activists feel now, far from 2020. Texas Democrats’ significant gains in the 2018 House of Representatives election raised the prospect for Republicans The party is losing its dominant status in Texas, prompting it to moderate its platform in 2020 to focus on bread and butter issues. Republicans in Texas did well in the 2020 election – although Biden won 46.5% of the vote in Texas, the highest share of Democrats since 1976 – and this year the issues of cultural warfare were once again at the forefront and in the center.
Jones said the Republican redistribution has made incumbents safer and less likely to be liked by moderates. In addition, inflation, the risk of recession, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and growing hostility to race, gender, and sexuality make Democrats increasingly likely to lose the US House of Representatives in the November midterm elections.
“As a result, GOP 2022 feels free to turn right, satisfied, confident that it will not return to pursue the party in November, except in perhaps half a dozen races,” Jones said. “And even the party’s pragmatic right-wing conservatives do not have the ability to claim, as they successfully did in 2020, that an ultra-conservative platform could cost the Republican majority majority status in Lone Star State. This year, even in the worst case scenario, the Republican Party won across the state, increasing the number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, increasing its majority in the Texas Senate by one seat, and retaining the 83 seats it held in the Texas House in 2021
Prior to the platform’s vote, party activists delivered fiery speeches attacking Democrats.
“They want to destroy the racial progress we have made by saying we are a racist nation,” said Robin Armstrong, a black doctor in Texas City who treated COVID patients with unapproved drug therapies advertised by Trump, including hydroxychloroquine. “The Democratic Party is now a party of chaos. They take advantage of the fact that they make us doubt the foundations on which this country is built …
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