Texas Republicans have approved a bold new 50-page platform that includes some highly controversial statements, such as:
1. “Abortion is not healthcare; it is homicide.”
2. Illegal immigration is the “greatest threat to American security and sovereignty.”
3. Gender-transition surgery for children is “child abuse.”
But that’s not even the most striking part.
The platform also proposes a law requiring candidates for statewide office to win a majority of the counties in the state, similar to the Electoral College model. This change would significantly increase the electoral power of deep-red rural counties, making it nearly impossible for Democrats to get elected.
Basically, the proposal would make it so whoever gets the most votes does *not* win the election. Instead, special powers will be granted to deep red rural counties to decide who wins.
The party hopes to finalize its platform on Wednesday, after Saturday’s votes on each proposal are tabulated.
Passed by delegates at the party’s biennial convention, the platform has traditionally been seen not as a definitive list of Republican stances, but a compromise document that represents the interests of the party’s various business, activist and social conservative factions. But in recent years — and amid a party civil war that’s pushed it further right — the platform has been increasingly used as a basis for censuring Republican officeholders who the party’s far right has attacked as insufficiently conservative, including Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, and U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzalez, R-San Antonio.
People are already reacting online:
What do you think? Could legislation like this save the Republic?
