The GOP Is 100% The Party of Trump Now
The 2020 GOP Platform was released. Compared to the 2016 one which ran 66 pages and had extensive policy proposals, 2020's is one page long and basically sums up to full and enthusiastic support for "the President's America-first agenda". Trump then released his "2nd Term Agenda" which includes:
Create 10 Million New Jobs in 10 Months
Develop a Vaccine by The End of 2020 [sic]
Return to Normal in 2021
Lower Healthcare Insurance Premiums
Teach American Exceptionalism
Drain the Globalist Swamp
Etcetera. It's surprising how much Trump has completely taken over the GOP. It's really difficult to tease out an underlying principle which is broadly consistent with traditionally conservative ideas of free markets and limited governments. Politico also has an article on the topic:
Every fourth summer, a presidential nominating convention gives occasion to appraise a party for its ideas, its principles, its vision for governing. Recent iterations of the GOP have been easily and expertly defined. Ronald Reagan’s party wanted to end the scourge of communism and slay the bureaucratic dragons of Big Government. George W. Bush’s party aimed to project compassion and fortitude, educating poor Americans and treating AIDS-stricken Africans, while simultaneously confronting the advance of Islamic terrorism. However flawed the policies, however unsuccessful their execution, a tone was set in these parties from the top-down. They stood for something manifest, even if that something was not always (or even usually) practiced by members of the party. [...]
It can now safely be said, as his first term in the White House draws toward closure, that Donald Trump’s party is the very definition of a cult of personality. It stands for no special ideal. It possesses no organizing principle. It represents no detailed vision for governing. Filling the vacuum is a lazy, identity-based populism that draws from that lowest common denominator Sanford alluded to. If it agitates the base, if it lights up a Fox News chyron, if it serves to alienate sturdy real Americans from delicate coastal elites, then it’s got a place in the Grand Old Party.
Is this a fair assessment? It seems that the 2020 platform confirms it. The election will determine whether this all-in gamble will pay off, but I'm very curious as to what will sustain it beyond a 2nd term.
The RNC’s justification for the barebones platform is purportedly because of pandemic concerns:
…out of concern for the safety of convention attendees and our hosts the RNC has unanimously voted to forego the Convention Committee on Platform, in appreciation of the fact that it did not want a small contingent of delegates formulating a new platform without the breadth of perspectives within the ever-growing Republican movement.
But they also say in the same paragraph:
The RNC, had the Platform Committee been able to convene in 2020, would have undoubtedly unanimously agreed to reassert the Party’s strong support for President Donald Trump and his Administration.
If an organization like the RNC offers up an explanation for odd behavior, I don't think charity requires that we accept it at face-value and it's perfectly appropriate to check the evidence and to see if it is in accord.
After all, the DNC was able to put together a platform, and they are ostensibly far more freaked out about covid than the RNC. The RNC certainly explained how in-person meetings will be disrupted, but they didn't explain at all how that would also preclude them from putting together a platform for 2020. What prevented them from putting one together virtually?
Their explanation for not wanting a small contingent of RNC delegates to create a platform "without the breadth of perspectives within the ever-growing Republican movement" is just laughable because they provided no evidence for this. Instead, I suspect they were actually worried about any remaining anti-Trump sentiments from having any presence at the convention, and that's a completely valid fear when you have such a robust Never Trump conservative wing, and mainstreamers like Kasich speaking at the DNC instead. This is entirely in accord with the comments RNC chair Ronna McDaniel made last year when asked about other Republicans running for the presidential nomination. As early as February 2019, the RNC leadership was firmly in support for Trump for the Republican nomination, despite ostensibly charged with remaining neutral about the primary process.
And further, if they really wanted the platform to showcase what they said was the "breadth of perspectives within the ever-growing Republican movement", issuing a platform centered around a single individual is a bizarre way of accomplishing that. Not only that, but half of the key convention speakers were just Trump family members. To me, all of this is an indication of Trump and the RNC leadership tightening control over the message by limiting participation and eliminating wayward wandering. The very opposite of what they claimed.