The GOP Platform is Out, and I Can't Stop Laughing

If you want to read the whole thing (I did so you won’t have to), thanks to NPR, you can view it here. Below is a summary of their bullet points.

In the rest of the document, they “detail” (and that’s really not an appropriate word for their blather) how they will undertake each of their bullet points.

So here’s why I can’t stop laughing.

They can’t do any of that. Not a single thing. Some of their points are diametrically opposed to one another. For example, they want to cut taxes, and I believe they do. BUT - most everything else on the list REQUIRES government funding to accomplish, and if you have no money, you cannot spend it. OH WAIT, I forgot, the Rethuglicans believe in deficit spending. They create more deficits than Democratic administrations. (Details and charts here.) Rational people spend the money they have, not make-believe money, and MAGA is not rational.

They plan to “end inflation”. In the w-h-o-l-e document they have no plan for this other than to cut government spending. I guess they think saying it will make it so.

They plan to deport “pro-Hamas radicals”. Since most of the people involved in the protests this year were American born, to where do they propose to deport them?

As someone who worked elections for more than 20 years, signing in voters, handing out ballots, counting ballots, and having seen both hand-counted results and computer scanned ballot results, I am laughing over the “paper ballots” idea. Paper ballots are great if they are optical scan, but otherwise, you have to count them, (we put them in stacks of 25), calculate the votes, then switch piles with a partner and count again. Over and over until all the numbers match. This is not only inefficient, but less accurate.

While it doesn’t make me laugh, they want to “prevent World War Three”, which will be impossible once they align with North Korea and Russia. Their overarching plan will CAUSE World War Three, not prevent it.

They want to build an Iron Dome for the entire country. Forget for a minute the trillions of dollars this would cost, let’s look at the timing. It took 6 years from design to deployment of Israel’s Iron Dome. Israel is 8,630 sq. miles, about the size of New Jersey. The continental US is about 3,706,269 square miles (plus Alaska and Hawaii) and even leveraging the SCOTUS Kelo decision, there would be a lot of land that would need to be taken by eminent domain, with associated lawsuits. My back of the envelope math says that the US is 429 times larger than Israel, and so, 6 years times 429 is 2,574 years? Even assuming an economy of scale, and discounting that they’d actually protect any blue states — it would be a L-O-N-G time.

As someone with, amoungst other things, a degree in Urban Planning, I’m laughing at the “rebuild the cities” bullet point. WTF does that even mean? I’m guessing they’re not talking about the dearth of housing, especially affordable housing, that needs to be built. Nor talking about repurposing dead malls and underutilized commercial properties. I’m guessing bulldozing streets into large boulevards for military parades (remember to reinforce the concrete, boys) and giant posters of their leader. If so, I’m hoping they use this one:

I read every party platform, every presidential cycle. EVERY single one. I like to appreciate our party’s plans and know our enemies’ schemes. Our platform for 2024 will be out around the time of the convention. I’ve already seen some draft sections, and I am proud to be a member of the Democratic Party.