The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report with Ed Martin.
Welcome, welcome. Welcome, it’s Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Please visit proamericareport.com proamericareport.com and sign up there for our emails and updates and a lot more. Great to be with you again, Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. So here’s today.
I want to tell you about why platforms matter.
Platforms matter, because there’s been lots of coverage of this, and I realized I maybe had not talked much about it. OK, so.
In a political setting in political parties, there has developed the the tradition of having what’s called a party platform. And you say, you said, well, what does that mean? Well, it’s it’s the idea is that a party platform is. What the party stands on.
And within the party platform, there are planks, right? What’s your plank on education? What’s your plank on national security? What’s your plank on family? And that’s the idea of a party. It’s kind of What does the party stand on and what, And therefore the language, that sort of metaphor continues. And they say, you know where the party stands. On these planks.
Over the course of the say, last fifty to 60 years, maybe 70 to 80 in America, we are down to two parties, right, Democrat and Republican, and each party have had their platforms that have developed. In other parts of the world. Parties will also have a platform. I often give the example in Ireland. I think there were seven or eight or nine Parties, you know, each party is getting 20%. Fifteen percent, 8% of the vote. It’s a it’s a different system. You can get elected in a parliamentary government then. Without a president formally elected by an Electoral College or a popular vote or anything else. And each of those parties will have a platform and the platform will have certain positions.
And so you run a say in Ireland, you’re on the Socialist Party. You’ve got these positions. You know the the Republican Party, the Democrat National Party, whatever, they are. Different names have the and the parties have different platforms.
And one of the experiences that happened in Ireland in the early 2000s Was there was a systemic effort by interest groups to remove from all the different parties the seven or eight or nine, as I mentioned, major parties, the platform plank on marriage and within a few years of getting rid of the definition of marriage between a man and a woman, the traditional definition in Ireland, the people voted, and by then the parties had all been against, they changed their position about marriage between a man and a woman, and they they. Then they voted as a nation popularly to eliminate that, that provision under the law.
Meaning. Platforms can be leaders of public opinion as well as helpful for a voter’s preference.
Now back to America. In America we have two parties, Democrat and Republican. Over the decades, especially the last 30 now you’ve seen the two parties really diverge.
There is no pro-life plank in the Democratic Party anymore. There is no parental rights protection in the Democrat Party platform anymore. When it comes to the you would think the protection of civil liberties in the Democrat Party, that’s where it traditionally came from, doesn’t exist.
And over time, you’ve seen the parties change and and and take on these characteristics. They used to overlap. You could be a Democrat in 1975 and be pro-life. There were lots of them. You can’t unless you want to disagree with the party platform. That’s a change.
And the party platform at the national level is adopted every four years at the Convention, the nominating convention. So in just a few days the the Republican National Committee will begin. Convention will begin and the party will consider a platform.
The platform will have been developed by the campaign of the nominating committee candidate Donald Trump, as well as by the RNC and by the party faithful that are at at the convention.
In about six weeks. In the middle of August, the Democrats will have their convention and they will have their platform.
Now, famously, the party platform, the Democrats, they voted God out of the platform a few years ago. I think it was 2,10 years ago, about, maybe 8 to 10 years ago, which is seems a little surprising, but they did that. They had a rabble rousing crowd and said we vote God out and they did.
But the Republican Party. Has a platform that has lots of positions on national security, on trade, on immigration. On on all the on inflation, on inflation in particular, it will have the the party platform will be the principles and the policies, but it will be aspirational and the aspirational part of it will will also lean towards the political, in other words. The candidate in this case, Donald Trump, who now has an 8 year record of more than that actually, but a a record of having talked about issues. He talked about it long before 2016, but he’s now got this eight years in public.
The contrast as president and then out of out of office on these key issues of, say, trade, where multilateral trade deals are not something he wants. That’s a change in the party platform. It’s that party is now saying how we’re going to protect American jobs differently, ending the forever wars. That’s a little bit of a different approach from the Republicans that tended to be more muscular after September 11th and and what happened on 9/11, but you will see some disputes in the Republican Party over The edges. You know, should there be this kind of language regarding abortion, should be there, that kind of language regarding parental rights, but by and large, the party is in broad agreement.
And the broad agreement coincides with Donald Trump. It coincides with his positions, some of which have changed from when he was younger when he was young man, he was pro. He says he was pro-choice. By the time he ran for office in 2016, he was pro-life. He talked about it in such a way that pro-lifers trusted him. Then he went into office, and he lived up to it. And people believe that about him, and they believe they understand it.
But that, that, that party structure, the party positions in the Republican Party, there will be some disagreements, there’s no doubt about that, and there will be some arguments.
And at the Republican convention, there will be a a set of delegates. One man and one woman from each of the 50 states plus 6 territories. So 56 men and 56 women will make up the platform Committee. Diverse as can be across the board from all over the world because when I say that I mean all 50 states, but then the territories are the Northern Marianas Island, Guam, other places, and they’ll all be in and they will decide, they work their will on the platform.
And that will be a big deal and that will be something that will I think will be and I’ve been working on it, if you may have heard that and seen that, I’ve been working on it myself.
I think it will be aspirational for a conservative Republican Party that is shaped by the positions that Donald Trump was able to prove work for our country used to be.
People said you can’t be for tariffs, it will cause the economy to collapse. It works fine.
You can’t be for closing the borders. Obviously we have to do it.
You can’t be for this or that. The other thing, lots of things. Some things that will be more important to say out loud again. The Rule of law, the Constitution. No more lawfare.
But let me challenge you as you watch in the next couple of months, you know it’s about six weeks total. Watch the Democrat platform.
There’s a real fight in the Democrat Party. The Republican Party platform will stand with Israel as a long standing ally. That’ll be the end of it. The Democrats are going to fight in their party, fight in their platform, fight as well as in their convention about the role of of Hamas in Gaza and how you should deal with terrorists and terrorist families that are being caught in a crossfire created by the terrorists, in my opinion. But that’s what we’re what we’re going to see on abortion. You can’t be pro-life anymore. On parental rights, on trans rights, in in the Democrat Party, on the platform. You’re going to see either one of two things. Either the people who hold those positions will be silenced by the majority, by the ruling part of the of the of the Democrats, or they will work their way, will work their will.
So if you think God out of the platform is a surprise, wait till you see trans rights, transgender rights to play sports, to be in Women’s locker Rooms. That’s what. That that’s the position of a of a large part of the Democratic Party that will have to be heard.
On the international scene, because of Joe Biden’s will, the Democrat Party, long described as a party of peace, it’s not true. But will they be for their positions on Ukraine, on the Forever Wars? How will they handle the Hamas situation? I mentioned that already. Parental rights, I mentioned that already.
The Democrats will do what the Republicans can’t. The Republicans cannot ignore their platform because our voters who vote Republican are generally conservatives, and some of them aren’t. Some are more moderate, but they’re going to be looking for the reasons to be for the Republican Party, and it will be in the candidate, yes, but it will be in the platform for sure.
The Democrats, they will get rid, they they will pretend they have a platform, but they will put no attention to it. They will say it doesn’t matter because they don’t. Their voters do not come. To that party for a a broad set of issues. They come for a couple, and they come for power.
And the couple issues they come for are the absolute. Necessity of abortion. In any form at any time with taxpayer money, etcetera, etcetera. And they come for power. They just want the power. That, that, that you’re not gonna see Democrats worrying about. Where’s God? Isn’t there a whole bunch of the country that believes in God? Why would we take God out of the platform? That’s not what the Democrat Party is gonna do. You’re going to see the platform fights if you look. Media is not going to want to cover it. The fight’s going to be in the Democrat Party that’s going to be interesting to watch and terrible for the country. In many ways, it would be better to have more people broadly being pro-life. For example, Pro parents, Pro family. But we are where we are.
All right, we got to take a break. I’ll be right back. It’s Ed Martin here. On the Pro America Report, back in a moment.
