Former president Donald Trump’s campaign advisers are pushing to significantly simplify and streamline the official platform of the Republican Party, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post.
Trump campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, the authors of the memo, criticized the “textbook-long platforms” the party has published for decades, which they said should be free from “special interest influence.” With the party’s current platform standing at more than 60 pages, the advisers emphasized that it was “incumbent upon” the party “to ensure our policy commitments to the American people are clear, concise, and easily digestible for every voter.”
Republicans opted not to write a new platform in 2020, leaving much to potentially be revised over the coming weeks. This year, the GOP hopes to hash out its platform during a closed-door meeting the week before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, which runs July 15 through 18.
Platform committee meetings have been televised in the past. Holding a private meeting earlier would also reduce public attention to the process.
A person familiar with the planning, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal details, said in past years lobbyists and special interest groups at the convention have pushed for issues that their clients sought.
“Publishing an unnecessarily verbose treatise will provide more fuel for our opponent’s fire of misinformation and misrepresentation to voters,” the memo dated Thursday states.
The New York Times earlier reported on the memo.
Although it’s not clear yet what this year’s document will say, several pieces of the most current document, last adopted in 2016, run counter to Trump’s present-day political positions.
The 2016 document said Republicans “will not accept any territorial change in Eastern Europe imposed by force,” though Trump has indicated that he would pressure Ukraine to give up territory to achieve peace after the 2022 Russian invasion.
Steve Deace, a conservative commentator in Iowa who supported Ron DeSantis in the GOP primary, said he “stopped fighting over the party platform a long time ago” because he believes it has not mattered much in practice.
“Trump is king. He conquered the party. … He may now do as kings do,” Deace added.
Some veterans of GOP politics said that the move to pare down the platform was politically smart.
“Maybe 15 people from each state care about the party platform, good for them. All it becomes is a Dem messaging doc anyway,” Rick Wiley, a former political director for the Republican National Committee, wrote on social media.
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Michael Scherer contributed to this report.
(c) Washington Post
