I did have to laugh…

I’m a fair-minded guy, really, despite my partisanship, and when it comes to politics I always try to go to original sources before I comment on things. The Republican Party Platform is a good example: Before I commented, I wanted to read up on it, and, well, it didn’t go well. It turned out the party was stuck in the past—literally!

It all started because this morning I’d been reading about how awful the Republican Party Platform is, like “6 Ways The RNC Platform Is Already Shaping Up To Be Crazy”, and “A GOP Governor’s Unbelievable Defense Of Her Party’s Anti-LGBT Platform” (tl;dr version: It’s really about promoting all Americans’ rights by excluding LGBT Americans from having any legal rights).

But rather than merely reading commentary from others, even those I find to be reliable, I wondered, what, exactly, the platform actually said.

So, I decided to see if the Republican Party had posted their platform online yet so I could read it for myself. I realised it might not be available, since it hadn’t yet been officially adopted, but I decided to check, anyway.

However, I did NOT expect to see the party was literally stuck in the past.

The screengrab above was the landing page for every link to the platform on the Republicans’ site, as well as from a Google search. Wouldn't you think they'd have put in a placeholder there instead of THAT?! (And, isn't it odd that the Statue of Liberty is looking to the Left—and that's where the light is coming from?)

Now, I realise that much of their platform is recycled, like the pandering to the Cliven (or is it Al? I do get confused…) Bundy Faction of the Republican Party, “GOP Platform Proposes To Get Rid Of National Parks And National Forests”, among other old planks, but surely a link to their 2012 platform should have been in an archive section or something, not at the end of the links to what one would expect to be their current platform?

Still, considering how very far in the distant past the Republican Party’s politics are stuck, I suppose 2012 is actually as up to date as we could possibly expect from them.

And, I did have to laugh. Of course.

Addendum: Today the Republican Convention approved the party’s platform for 2016, and the links now go to a blog post about it (seriously!) that includes a link to a PDF of the 2016 platform. Still amusing us, the file was called “DRAFT_12_FINAL[1]-ben_1468872234.pdf”, which is a really helpful and descriptive file name, as I’m sure we’ll all agree. The filename for 2012’s was “2012GOPPlatform.pdf”, so they obviously can’t learn from their past. Clearly.

This post is revised and extended from what I posted this morning on the AmeriNZ Facebook Page.