The Neverending Convention, Part III

About the neverending Texas State Republican Convention, (see part I and part II) I don’t know whether the report of the Platform Committee will ever happen. It would normally happen on Friday and Saturday of a convention weekend—usually the last major piece of business. But this year’s convention was anything but normal.

The Eventual Schedule

Thursday was a full day of delay because of technical difficulties related to doing a planned in-person convention suddenly online. All contingency plans that had been underway for months turned out to be inadequate, especially when you add denial-of-service attacks into the mix. Thursday evening an emergency meeting of the State Republican Executive Committee—the SREC: two representatives from each of the 31 senatorial districts—made the decision to postpone all business until Saturday morning and try to do all that would have happened Thursday through Saturday instead on Saturday and Sunday.

That might have worked, if everything had gone smoothly. But online issues continued. Even people who had been able to participate in earlier meetings were shut out of later meetings. Congressional District (CD) and then Senatorial District (SD) caucus meetings went late into the night.

The Permanent Platform Committee would normally have met on Thursday. Instead, most committee members drove home that day. And Friday we were on hold. Then we had to be ready to go all day Saturday, adjusting each time the schedule got pushed back. We eventually met at 9:00 AM, under a tight timeline; we were supposed to present the final report at noon on Sunday.

The online meeting of the Platform Committee was livestreamed.
Screenshot from here

Online meetings are difficult to begin with. There was the added difficulty that SD caucuses met late Saturday night—at which time they elected permanent committee members. During mine, my computer froze and I was unable to vote, although we made all temporary committee members permanent, so I didn’t feel disenfranchised. That was a personal technical issue not caused by the convention’s typical issues, most of which did not affect me.

Anyway, not all of the SD reports got to the committee chair in time. So invitations for the Sunday morning Zoom meeting went out to the temporary committee members—without the knowledge that some of them had been replaced for the permanent committee. Three people showed up who shouldn’t have been there, and three people didn’t immediately get the invitation when they should have. When that was straightened out, we hadn’t gone much beyond roll call. There was debate about a plank, with amendments proposed by a temporary committee member who did not belong there—and she knew she did not belong but acted as if she had authorization.

There was a need for a break for technical reasons—because the livestream wasn’t yet working. During the break, that huge membership issue was corrected, new members were welcomed, and business backed up to the debate of that plank. The original plank was proposed again; the friendly amendment was proposed again and accepted. And the amendment, by the unauthorized committee member who was attempting to infuse LGBT sensibilities to the plank—insisting that the Republican Party was leaving her out—was not proposed. I suspect it was her push for LGBT issues throughout the process that got her replaced by her SD.

There were only a handful of planks and amendments that got handled in permanent committee, and then testimony was taken. The committee had been told there would be no time for testimony, but then complaints about that being against the rules pressed for inviting testimony. I’m glad. I think testimony is an essential element of the process, although it’s not nearly as easy to accomplish online as in person. Time was supposed to be limited to 20 minutes. With getting started, plus additions to the time added, testimony took up about 45 minutes.

Much of the meeting looked like this, with the document shared on the screen.
Screenshot from here

At that point we were already supposed to be getting ready for the report in the general session. And at that point, my challenge is to make the document ready for floor debate (strikes and edits removed, make the document clean—and we still hadn’t had the opportunity for a full careful edit).

Anyway, the meeting handled maybe one more proposed amendment before the meeting was called to close. There were issues people felt strongly about and wanted to handle (an issue I’ll talk about below) that may end up in a minority report—an alternate platform version—which is a fairly rare thing usually handled during floor debate.

General session was postponed from noon until around 4:00 PM. Eventually all committees except Rules and Platform were able to give their reports. And then an hour or more was spent on a proposal to postpone all except the essential business of another SD caucus to some future day, to be determined by some ad hoc committee chosen by the body. (I never saw the choosing happen. While I was watching, the RPT people were handling an onslaught of suggested names—nearly as many as there were delegates—which was yet another denial-of-service attack. How and when that got resolved, I did not see.)

Technical problems were disenfranchising too many in my SD, so we did not gavel in that night; we met around 10:00 AM Monday, getting our voting for State Party Chair and Vice Chair done hours after the vote was in (from the SDs that met Sunday night, and all the way up until 5:00 AM, I heard) and the winners declared. So our vote was irrelevant. But we did get to choose our SREC members, which was important business.

That left Platform and Rules on hold. Yesterday we got word that the ad hoc committee has recommended that these two reports will be approved “pending 60% line-by-line voting by the delegates.” This will be done by a “Survey Monkey-style” survey to delegates and alternates, allowing three days for completion. This will include the proposed language of the Minority Report.

There will be no floor debate. No ability to amend. No ability to add any planks or language. I don’t know if this can be done without a legal challenge, but it might be the best reasonable compromise, since there’s no guarantee that a newly scheduled online meeting won’t meet with the same denial-of-service attacks and resulting credentialing issues that caused the original delay. Any way you look at it, people have been disenfranchised

.

Now, on to the content discussion.

Pandemic Response

The pandemic is on everyone’s minds. There are several new planks related to lockdowns and pandemic response. It was my impression, reading through the resolutions that came in, that just about every subcommittee got proposed ideas related to pandemic response. But two new planks came out of Constitutional Issues and three came out of Health and Human Services. I think you can tell Texas Republicans really don’t like our inalienable rights to be alienated. Platform planks of course do not have the power of law; they are intended to direct our elected officials in what we want the law to say.

Constitutional Issues

Lockdowns Never Again: The Republican Party of Texas calls upon our elected officials to never again implement mass lockdowns on the people, our businesses, and churches in the name of communicable disease response; nor should Texas officials ever again presume they know better how to treat or prioritize the medical treatment of Texans and to make command and control edicts that dictate to healthcare providers how to do their job. We oppose funding or implementation of any form of contact tracing.

Limit Executive Power: In the event the State Executive Branch activates the emergency powers for a disaster, the Legislature will automatically be convened two weeks later for a session to take up whatever matters deemed necessary for the Legislature.

Health and Human Services

Contact Tracing: We strongly oppose contact tracing, tracking, or surveillance, and we also strongly oppose any action similar to the federal TRACE Act. Contract tracing, tracking, or surveillance or not core functions of public health. No government entity, nor private entity, nor combination thereof, nor the Texas National Guard, shall ever be employed to violate the natural rights of Texans.

Pandemic Release: The Republican Party Texas opposes the release of convicted felons from prison due to a risk of infection within the prison system during a pandemic.

Pandemic Business Fines: The RPT supports prohibiting fines or imprisonment of business owners for operating their business during pandemics and call for the legislature to pass these protections into law.

Convention of the States

The Minority Report, which I haven’t seen, I believe will relate to the Convention of States plank. This has been a plank for some time. But the Texas Legislature accomplished its call for an Article 5 Convention of States two sessions ago (if I’m right, it was in 2017). Our platform is long, and one thing that can be done is remove planks that are no longer needed, because the legislature wrote it into law. That’s on a case-by-case basis, because sometimes the law only accomplishes in part, and sometimes the party wants to keep proclaiming the idea, even though it is law in Texas. For example, I think we’ll always say that we want Texas free from any state income tax, even though that is the law—just in case some future legislative body isn’t aware of our absolute declaration against it. But sometimes we can delete a plank. For example, in 2018 we had a plank called Abby’s Law, referring to a woman who testified at convention about the need for swift processing of sexual assault evidence (rape kits). The law was passed in 2019, so this year’s platform doesn’t include it.

About the Article V plank: in 2018, even though the legislation had been passed, it was recent, and the platform committee didn’t want to delete the idea that the Republican Party supported it. So the wording was changed from calling for it to reaffirming our support for it:

Article V Convention of States: We reaffirm our support for our Texas State Legislators’ call for a limited Article V Convention of States for the specific purpose of reducing the power of the federal government, including fiscal responsibility, balanced budget, and term limits. Any proposed amendments must be ratified by three-fourths of the states.

This time around an odd thing happened. It was expected that there would be a decision about whether to still keep this reaffirming language or not, since it wasn’t necessary to say this many years after it was accomplished. Either in or out, Texas is one of the states calling for a convention of the states.

But in subcommittee it got turned around entirely. Some temporary committee members were against the Convention of States and were attempting to convince everyone of its danger, to call for the Texas legislature to undo—rescind—their call for it. While I know people of goodwill on both sides of this issue, I would not say that the rescind side actually represents the will of a strong contingent of Republican voters, let alone a majority. In other words, the call to rescind was the opinion of a relatively small faction. Here’s their wording:

Article V Convention of States: We support the rescission of the State of Texas application to Congress for a convention under article V for proposing amendments to change the current limits on federal spending, jurisdiction, and terms of office. Our Constitution is the firewall guarding our unalienable rights – but it is a document, not self-enforcing. We petition our elected officials at all levels to support, enforce, and give effect to the Constitution and to Interpose between The People and the federal government, as required under Article VI, and resist any efforts to enforce it via changes. This is the remedy espoused by James Madison to “runaway government.”

Article VI is added in, and various other things. Here’s where politics comes in. What I believe happened was this: the temporary committee people who favored the rescind idea planned, got themselves appointed (usually this happens by volunteering to whoever handled the platform at the SD level), and then expressed interest in the Constitutional Issues subcommittee, where they could put forth their ideas and persuade the rest of the subcommittee.

Their SDs were made aware—because the Convention of States people were paying attention—and those temporary committee members were replaced Saturday night at their respective SD caucuses. Then, in the Sunday morning meeting, the debate was to delete the plank—the rescind version above. That passed, meaning no Article 5 plank remaining. But there was confusion by some on the committee, because they thought that this would automatically mean it would revert to the 2018 wording. With more time for debate, that could have happened. A proposal could have been made to add a plank containing the 2018 wording. But the motion to delete happened just before the break to begin testimony. And the short time before close of meeting after testimony didn’t allow for it.

Again, with or without, Texas has already expressed its favor for a Convention of States by passing the legislation. And we haven’t changed that in any official expression. Removal of that plank from the 2020 platform can be seen as just housekeeping. But I believe the Minority Report is asking to restore the 2018 wording.

I was concerned that, bringing it up during floor debate would open an opportunity to the rescind people to express their message to the whole crowd, and it might do more harm than good to the Convention of States cause. (Personally, I lean slightly in favor of COS, but with some reservations. I have experts to turn to, but I don’t know for certain that it is safe. Mark Levin’s book on this issue is on my reading list. There’s time while we wait for additional states to make their call.)

However, the way it stands, being able to bring it up in a survey, without floor debate, may just accomplish what Convention of States people want without the downside of a floor debate.

Notes I scribble to myself to document each
editorial change as I make it permanent,
collaborating with the committee chair.
Glamorous work, I know.

As for my work, it’s nearly done. I was finally able to do a careful edit this week, and go through each and every jot and tittle with the committee chair. There are still a few questions outstanding, where I’m waiting for feedback. Meanwhile that latest edited version is available for viewing on the convention website, as it has been all along (with some formatting problems inherent in Google Docs that look perfectly fine in the master document in Word). I hope when/if they do the survey, it is using the post-careful-edit version, instead of the quick and dirty one the RPT has had in hand since Sunday afternoon in anticipation of floor debate.

What I thought was going to be a week-long commitment has eaten up much of my month. And that was with the help of a good team. So I’d like this neverending convention to be over. If you still find errors in the final product, please forgive me. But I think it’s worth reading. And, if you find an issue you’re passionate about, consider doing some citizen lobbying when we get to the next legislative session, just a half a year away.