The platform is to say whatever it takes to the people in front of him at any given moment so they vote for him.
The new platform softened language on abortion, excised old language referring obliquely to gay conversion therapy and culled a section about reducing a national debt that Mr. Trump had increased by nearly $8 trillion during his term in office.
Mr. Trump made clear to his team that he wanted the 2024 platform to be his and his alone. He wanted it to be much shorter and simpler — and, in some cases, vaguer. He was especially focused on the language about abortion, which he recognized was a potentially potent issue against him in a general election. He wanted nothing in the platform that would give Democrats an opening to attack him, and he made clear to aides that he was perfectly fine with bucking social conservatives, for whom he had delivered a tremendous victory by reshaping the Supreme Court with a conservative supermajority.
Mr. Trump also stressed that he did not want to define marriage as between one man and one woman. Instead, the document contains a vague statement open to interpretation: “Republicans will promote a Culture that values the Sanctity of Marriage.”
One person involved in the process recalled Mr. Trump saying privately: “Sanctity of marriage. Don’t define it.”
This is a huge paradigm shift. The Republican party went from being an evangelical Christian, tax-cut whackoparty into…
well, without the platform, nobody knows.
It’s just a change to be vague about polarizing topics to attract voters. There is zero accountability for campaign promises.
The lack of promises with regards to abortion and same-sex marriage is huge. It’s a colossal shift. Trump has always been more of a traditional Jeffersonian Republican than a Federalist - he’s in favour of shifting power from the federal government to the states. This is an increasing indicator that the states will be what decides on these social topics, not the feds.
That also explains why he’s getting so much funding and support from the elite in Silicon Valley - they would like nothing more than for California to decide legislation rather than DC.
It’s increasingly apparent that Trump views the role of the federal government as an arbiter of the economy and the role of the United States (as a concept) as a way of unifying the disparate interests of different states with regards to foreign policy. By gutting federal agencies, the only logical result is pushing power down to the individual states.
So he wants to enact shitty awful terrible ideas still but he doesn’t want everyone to know he’ll enact those shitty ideas that no one likes.
I don’t think America can last another presidency of this braindead moron.