GOP Party Platform Looking Good To Conservatives

by Michael Illions | August 31, 2008 10:49 am

One of the secondary story lines to this weeks GOP Convention is tomorrow’s process to propose and adopt the GOP National Platform for 2008. Just this past week, before the awesome announcement of Sarah Palin as the Vice Presidential nominee, the platform committee submitted a Pro-Global Warming position[1], which was not welcomed by Conservatives.

Myself and many other Conservatives were concerned that the platform would continue in the wrong direction, making key changes to other issues, with input from John McCain. Thankfully, the GOP not only stayed true to Conservatives principles, but in some areas, even strengthened our stance:

On immigration, Barbour said the platform is the toughest ever put forward. It calls for a border fence and English as the official language, and opposes amnesty, driver’s licenses, in-state tuition rates, Social Security and other government benefits for illegal immigrants. GOP delegates also aim to block federal funds to cities that bar police from working with immigration authorities under so-called sanctuary ordinances.

Before the final vote, delegates waded deep into a debate over embryonic stem cells — another area where many differ with McCain, who supports relaxing federal restrictions on the funding of such research. They voted to ban human cloning and “the creation of or experimentation on human embryos for research purposes.” {Source: Newsday.com[2]}

While the committee went into the turtle position for John McCain and blocked a move to deny citizenship to U.S. born children of illegal immigrants, the rest of the illegal immigration platform is pretty strong.

Another issue that Conservatives were keeping an eye on was the Pro-Life issue, and I’m happy to report that the platform committee got this one right as well:

ST. PAUL — The Republican Party platform this year will reassert the party’s opposition to abortion. And again it will not allow for exceptions in the cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother, even though Senator John McCain, the presumptive presidential nominee, has long called for such exceptions.

Mr. McCain has been trying to win over social conservatives wary of his candidacy, and the party is set to approve the platform Monday without the exceptions. On Friday, he named a vice-presidential running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, who opposes any exception for abortion and whose selection was hailed unequivocally by groups opposing abortion rights. {Source: NY Times[3]}

This platform has to be seen as a win by Conservatives. With John McCain wishy washy on many issues, we could have see a lot more tinkering or the outright elimination of positions that would have moved this party closer to the Democrats.

Michael “A.J. Sparxx” is a World-Class Athlete Professional Wrestler and blogger at Conservatives with Attitude![4]