Trump doesn't want Americans to know what Republicans stand for

[Zorro]

A group of Republican officials is to convene this week in Milwaukee to hash out what their party would try to do if given power. Former president Donald Trump’s campaign has pushed for their conclusions, in the form of a 2024 party platform, to be as anodyne and vague as possible.

One could argue that this shows today’s Republican Party stands for nothing beyond fealty to Mr. Trump. Actually, the GOP has an ambitious agenda, and much of it is unpopular. That is likely why Mr. Trump doesn’t want it written down in an official document — and why the party’s platform committee also plans to meet behind closed doors, even though sessions have traditionally been televised on C-SPAN.

Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, the presumptive nominee’s top two advisers, wrote in a memo to delegates drafting the platform: “Publishing an unnecessarily verbose treatise will provide more fuel for our opponent’s fire of misinformation and misrepresentation to voters.” The same aides previously sought to distance Mr. Trump from a 920-page blueprint for his second term, released as part of “Project 2025,” an effort among Trump-aligned activists to prepare an agenda for his return to the White House. But Russ Vought, Mr. Trump’s former budget chief and a potential White House chief of staff, wrote a chapter for Project 2025 and is now policy director for the platform committee.

Abortion is the issue Mr. Trump’s team most fears. The GOP’s 2016 platform endorsed a 20-week national ban on the procedure; a “human life amendment” to the Constitution; and federal personhood legislation to provide 14th Amendment protections to fetuses. Mr. Trump privately refers to abortion as the “a-word” and recognizes that his role in overturning Roe v. Wade is a liability in the general election, even though he has boasted about it. So now Mr. Trump says he wants to leave abortion policy to the states, that he won’t try to ban medication abortion and that he supports in vitro fertilization.

https://wapo.st/3VWvtoD

[Meadowoak]

1. They stand for tax cuts for the rich, and they stand for

Recessions and high unemployment to drive down wages. That's it.

[FakeNoose]

2. Trump's 2016 platform was written (or revised) by the convicted criminal Paul Manafort

I don't think Chump had a platform in 2020, did he? When the Repukes' candidate is a populist narcissistic fear-monger, their platforms are pretty much ignored anyway.