The 2024 Republican Platform | News

After offering No platform for the 2020 election (the official platform was “whatever Donald Trump wants”), the Republican Party has offered a 20-point platform for 2024 (https://ballotpedia.org/The_Republican_Party_Platform,_2024). It’s the same nonsense you heard in Trump’s campaign speeches. But it’s a clever deception. The real intent of each of the 20 points is far more evil than it first appears.

They want to close the border to stop the invasion of murderers and rapists; deporting illegal aliens is high on the list, appearing in points 1, 2, and 10. More specifically, they want to stop the migrant crime epidemic (Is there one? Aren’t we already trying to stop crime?), destroy foreign drug cartels and gang violence (Really? How?), and lock up violent criminals (Aren’t we already doing that?). You can judge for yourself whether the threat they claim is real, or whether it justifies mass deportations.

They want to stop inflation. Good for them. And they have two policies to do that. First, they would tell every department and cabinet head to do everything in their power to stop inflation, despite the fact that none of them have the slightest power to do so; and impose a 10 to 20 percent tariff on all imports. Tariffs are not paid by foreign countries; they are essentially a sales tax paid by American consumers. So their plan is (1) delegate responsibility without any authority, and (2) raise all prices by 10 to 20 percent. That’s how they’re going to stop inflation? Really?

They want to make America the dominant energy producer in the world. We are already the largest oil producer in the world, meeting 100 percent of our oil needs. So what exactly are they proposing? I’m pretty sure it has to do with “drill, baby, drill,” which is to eliminate the regulations that protect us from the dangers of fracking and offshore drilling so that oil companies can produce and export more oil, increasing their profits and shifting the risks to the rest of us.

They want to stop all outsourcing, so that instead of buying a sewing machine from China for $100, you can buy one made in Cleveland for $600. But these new American factories will use cheap industrial robots, so no new jobs will be created. But if you stop imports, investors can build factories full of robots, cheapen the stuff we used to buy from abroad, and charge us what they want, without having to deal with international competition.

They are proposing big tax cuts for workers, including no tax on tips (which are generally underreported anyway). We can assume they will pass even bigger tax cuts for billionaires, like Trump did last time. And since that will reduce the amount of money the government has to help its citizens, don’t expect any help from Washington in the future.

They want to “defend the Constitution and our fundamental freedoms.” Aren’t we doing that already? I think that’s code for “don’t limit the freedom of politicians to lie to us, because that’s censorship.” And it seems that for Republicans, freedom of religion means imposing their religious beliefs on women who have abortions. Do they also want us to call them “infidels”?

They want to “prevent World War III,” which means “forcing Ukraine to surrender to Russia.” That would reward Putin for helping Trump win the 2016 election – help that Bill Barr says Russia didn’t give Trump (the Mueller report says it did).

They want to end the arming of the government, which I believe means dropping all pending charges against Trump. Republicans say you can’t trust the FBI, the CIA, or the Justice Department. That’s funny; Putin says that too.

They want to rebuild our cities, make them safe, clean, and beautiful. They mean “move the homeless somewhere else,” right? In the 1960s, “urban renewal” meant “negro removal.” Can we come up with a new euphemism for clearing out homeless camps and dumping their residents in the countryside? Maybe “the countryside of the impoverished.”

They want to strengthen and modernize our military. Our military budget is currently 40 percent of total global military spending, more than the next nine countries combined. Are we going to spend more? Sounds good. Where is this money coming from?

They want to keep the US dollar as the world’s number one reserve currency (read more about this at https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/dollar-worlds-reserve-currency ). There are actually eight reserve currencies at the moment. There are some advantages to being number 1; but losing that special status would just be inconvenient, especially if the reserve currencies were all replaced by Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). So it sounds patriotic, but it’s just nationalistic bombast.

They want to protect Social Security and Medicare—or so they say. But if they keep cutting taxes for the rich, eventually they’ll run out of money for these two programs. Then they can say, “We can’t afford these programs,” and the dumbest half of voters will believe them.

They want to eliminate the electric vehicle mandate and let cars pollute until the oil runs out. Oil companies, which are big donors to Republican campaigns, would reap huge profits from the deficit.

They want to abolish the Department of Education and put religious schools in charge of educating your children so that your children will not hear anything that conflicts with the religious beliefs of the Republicans. They will also ban schools from teaching that black people have ever been mistreated in our country, which they call “Critical Race Theory.”

They want to “secure elections,” which means making it “harder to vote for people who are likely to vote for Democrats.”

Finally, they want to “unite our country by taking it to new and record levels of success,” because they could not imagine a more empty promise or a less detailed explanation of how such vague and unclear goals could be achieved.

This is not a list of the 20 most important goals of the American people. Each of the 20 points conceals a more sinister intent. It reflects the campaign of hate and anger that the Republican Party has waged for decades. And it doesn’t even include Project 2025, the truly horrific vision the Republican Party has for the future of our country, which a re-elected President Trump would carry out via executive orders already being prepared for him by the Heritage Foundation.

What we need as a country has little to do with this list. We need more infrastructure. We need an education system that better prepares our citizens for new jobs that replace traditional jobs. We need to teach voters how to spot when they are being manipulated, as several European countries are already doing. We need a health care system like every developed country in Europe has. And we need tax rates that fund the budget that a large country needs in the 21.^st century.

Les Pinter lives in Springville. He will be hosting a Victory Party on the first Saturday after the November 5 election at a location to be announced. Sign up for an invitation at http://LPinter.com.