COMMENTARY | As an unaffiliated voter, I keep looking for something from either the Republicans or the Democrats or the candidates themselves that might make me feel comfortable about who I eventually vote for in November. The newly approved Republican platform that was selected on Tuesday doesn’t score any points on social issues for me, however.
According to the Associated Press , the plaform begins with a statement about how the American Dream is at risk and that the GOP will profoundly change the way the “government operates; the way it budgets, taxes and regulates.
The platform then goes on to encapsulate the party’s official stance on policy and social issues. From this encapsulation, I get the impression that the American Dream as an equal opportunity for everyone will be upheld as long as your version of it doesn’t include a same-sex partnership. The party platform backs a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union of one man and one woman.
And the American Dream as an equal opportunity will be upheld as long as you aren’t an illegal immigrant who was brought here as a child, considers this country your home and would like to pay in-state tuition to go to a university in the state where you live. Under the Republican platform, federal funding to those universities will be denied if they allow you to pay in-state tuition to attend.
The American Dream is an equal opportunity unless you’re an adult under the age of 26 now covered on your parents’ insurance plan as allowed in the health care act. Otherwise, ready or not, you need to buy your own insurance because the Republican platform supports halting progress on the health care act and repealing it altogether.
The platform states that Republicans will change the way the government regulates. This apparently means calling for both a ban on abortions and a ban on family planning for teens. It means single-sex classrooms and abstinence-only education.
While I do agree with the Republican Party, at least in part, on a number of issues, including energy policy, reforming the tax code and not using a stimulus to create temporary or artificial jobs, the social platform is a complete turn-off. What I see is a lot of effort that could be used to work on immediate needs such as the economy going towards attempting to control the reproductive parts of women, amending the Constitution in order to dictate who can make a marital commitment to whom and taking a zero tolerance on illegal immigrants, regardless of why they’re here or what they need to become productive residents of our country.
Although platforms are merely a party statement, and the candidates themselves don’t necessarily subscribe to all of what the platform states, it still pushes me — as an independent — further away from the Republican Party.
