Read the Republican 2012 Platform

We Deserve Better--I couldn't agree more. I am sure this was just some sloppy copy editing, but it works for me.

I read the Republican platform this week, after RNC prominent leaders were quoted as saying that you shouldn't pay too much attention to it. House Speaker Boehner stated that he didn't know anyone who had read it. Well, that is disturbing in and of itself. Why are they discouraging reading it?

The obvious reason is that they really need people who in no way benefit from their agenda to vote Republican. So what did I find?  There were things that I expected, of course.  The much publicized stand on outlawing abortion, even in the case of rape or incest.  The party has come off as misogynistic at best, and at worst advocating that women should be stripped of autonomy over their own lives--they don't just hate us, then want to control us. When someone joked about attending the RNC in Tampa as stepping back 400 year, there were some aspects of the platform that are just that.

They have an equally anti-civil rights stand on same sex marriage.  Atrocious, but not surprising.  It is an anti-immigration platform--they have no perspective on what makes this country great, but again, no big surprise.  The states in the south that have enacted tough laws related to undocumented labor have no one to pick produce, so it is rotting in the field.  Short sighted, maybe a bit xenophobic, but not surprising.   The thing that surprised me at first was the attack on institutions of higher learning.  The one thing we have going right in education and they want to dismantle it.   Why?  We are still the envy of the world in that arena.

The platform outlines several policy goals affecting higher education, including calls for expanding alternatives to traditional colleges, increasing private-sector participation in student loans, and combating liberal bias at public institutions.  Those alternative programs include “community colleges and technical institutions, private training schools, online universities, life-long learning, and work-based learning in the private sector.”  So, they recognize that better educated constituents are less likely to vote Republican, so let's let's figure out ways to keep them less educated--and as a bonus, let's have private banks make money lending these students money so that they owe the private sector bankers money as well.  Give them less opportunities for success and make them pay as much or more for the privilege.  Just when we need innovation and opportunity to address 21st century problems, they publicly stand for providing less of each. 

It is so ironic that in my lifetime there was a time when white Southerners wouldn't vote Republican because it was the party of Lincoln.  Also in my lifetime it ceased to be the party of fiscal conservatism.  Now they are the party that doesn't want anyone to read what they stand for, because there just aren't enough people who benefit from these beliefs for them to carry the day.