Convention Debrief—Platform and Resolutions

This is Part III of my debriefing of the Republican Party of Texas Convention, which ran Monday, June 13, through Saturday, June 18. (Part I was on the editing adventure; Part II was on Rules and Legislative Priorities.)

Finally I’m getting to Platform, plus Resolutions, which probably require some explaining. 

Platform Committee taking a vote, screenshot from here.
The middle section, with Chairman Matt Patrick in the center, is upper left;
right side is upper right; left side is below. I am handling the file, seated next to the Chair.

Just a word, first. If you’ve been looking online for the final version, it is not there yet. I have not yet received the end-of-convention file from RPT, which handled it during floor debate. In the meantime, we’ve worked on taking care of editing issues, noticing repeated titles in different sections, and creating an index. Maybe we’ll get the file tomorrow. My hope is to get it completed and turned in by Friday so I can enjoy a nice holiday weekend. I’m not sure why I didn’t get the file right away. The person handling the file got sick, so we pushed our deadline back a week. But I really just need it sent as an attachment, so it shouldn’t require much work on their part.

They may want to delay until they get the scantron done. That’s the counting of the up-or-down votes on each plank. The machine was delivered to them last Friday; it was the wrong machine. The replacement should come on Tuesday (tomorrow), so they should be able to set it up and do the counting on Wednesday. Again, I don’t need that information before I do my editing. If a plank, or planks, gets under 50% approval, then deleting that plank is a very simple matter. But it has never happened. In fact, I don’t think there’s ever been a plank that got under 2/3 approval. But getting a higher approval (90% or higher) is used to convince the legislators to support an issue.

 

Resolutions

The platform gets created out of resolutions that get set to state from district and county conventions, which got them from precinct conventions. A resolution has a format, typically with explanations of reasoning with each paragraph worded, “Whereas….” Then comes the statement part, often worded as “Therefore, be it resolved that….” When it comes to writing the platform, we take the wording in the “be it resolved statement” and reword it as a platform plank—something like, “We urge the Legislature to…” or “We support…” or “We proclaim that….” The Whereas statements might get referred to on rare occasions for clarity. But our process would be simpler if submissions came in closer to platform wording, which some of them do. My senatorial district sends them all in as platform wording.

But there is another type of resolution that is not part of the platform. These resolutions are statements proclaimed by the body. I didn’t understand about these different resolutions until I became a precinct chair, and we started dealing with resolutions as part of our quarterly meetings. In those cases, the Harris County Republican Party Executive Committee, made up of precinct chairs and officers, would vote on acceptance and wording of such proposed resolutions. Those that were accepted by the body would be posted on the website, and sent to the appropriate people, such as officeholders and media.

Some years at the state convention there are no such resolutions for the Platform & Resolutions Committee to deal with. Last time there was one, and it did not pass. This year there are two; both passed. And they have gotten some media attention, which might have been a goal of some people. But the media—even thorough media like The Epoch Times—has misunderstood. The resolutions are not part of our platform, but they are part of the Platform & Resolutions Committee Report. They show up below the platform in the report. And they become, if approved, statements made by the body of delegates.

Both resolutions came up late in the process, on the day of Permanent Committee, if I’m remembering right. They are considered separately from the sections of the platform, and are required to be handled in floor debate.

The first one proclaims that election fraud changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. It’s bold to say so, but it’s a fact, provable if we would ever get a court to look at the evidence (the movie 2000 Mules was shown in various discussion sessions during convention week), and the majority of the delegates hold this view.

As with all platform planks and resolutions, this does not have the force of law. It is a statement; that is all.  But a very loud majority felt like it was worth saying.

The second one was a response to the Senate vote that week on gun control, signed onto by Texas’s Senator John Cornyn and a number of others. They were called out and condemned for going against the Constitution and the will of the people of Texas.

 

Platform

I talked about our process in the first post. Today is finally about platform content—which I did not affect, other than as a delegate. Editors are there to facilitate the work of the Committee, not to influence it. I had my chance to do that at the senatorial district level.

The sections still relate broadly to Senate committees in the Texas Legislature, but order was changed somewhat this year. Rather than the sections being alphabetical, they’re laid out in ways that seem to flow logically. Constitutional Issues is the first section after Preamble & Principles, since it states overriding purposes. Business then flows into Finance, which deals with funding, so Education follows and then Health & Human Services. Then we get into governing, local on up to national, with Criminal & Civil Justice, State Affairs, Government & Election Integrity, and finally National Defense and Foreign Affairs.

The names of the last two were changed. Election Integrity was always in Government, but parts of it were also in State Affairs; now they’re together. Government used to contain Foreign Affairs, but that seemed like a more logical fit with National Defense.

All of this is to say, if you’re trying to track the changes from the previous platform, good luck with that. After subcommittees do their work, the Committee of the Whole is creating a whole new document, to be used for the next two years.

There are seldom changes to the Preamble and Principles. Two years ago we added a single word: “equally.” But this year there is a sentence added within the Preamble: “We recognize that human nature is immutable.” I believe this is referring to attempts to change gender or some other characteristic we’re born with. There was a suggested amendment about repudiating socialism and asserting national sovereignty, but it failed. Those ideas, however, show up elsewhere in the document.

Parents’ Rights

Parental rights, as you saw from Legislative Priorities, was a big issue this year. It comes up in Constitutional Issues, subsection Citizen Rights, and again in Education, subsection Parents’ Rights, with several planks. The one in Constitutional Issues was amended on the floor to add language about transparency and a Parental Rights Amendment to the state constitution. That issue was covered and detailed in one of the Education planks. But I guess it doesn’t hurt to say it in more than one place. I’d just like the floor to know, that issue was not neglected by the Committee.

 

Convention of States

One of the contended issues was Article V Convention of States. Texas passed the call for an Article V convention several years ago. But that hasn’t stopped opposition from trying to get rid of it every year. They did that last year during Temporary Committee, and it had to be brought back during Permanent Committee. This year it was there at the end of subcommittee, but got struck during Temporary Committee of the Whole. I missed that debate, doing other duties across the hall. But it was first order of business for Permanent Committee on Thursday, and it got reinstated with slightly different wording, asking the Legislature to extend the call.

Important public testimony came from the Chair of Legislative Priorities, who pointed out that COS was one of the 15 priorities of that committee, and it would be more than awkward to have a legislative priority that was struck from the platform.

One committee member, Tom Glass, had voted to strike in Temporary Committee, but changed his mind the next day. He had been thinking, since we’ve passed the legislation, it didn’t still need to be in our platform. But because there is a time-sensitive sunset clause, we need it in the platform to make sure it doesn’t disappear. He did, however, amend to keep only the last sentence, which related to that clause.

Bill Ely, the committee member from my SD, and another board member of our local Tea Party with me, is a COS champion. He gave an excellent speech in the Permanent Committee, bringing in data from the resolutions across the state, which he had studied after setting up our spreadsheet for us. I wanted to link to that here (it cues up here), but the sound cuts out almost as he starts, I was disappointed to find. Anyway, he rebutted some of the previous night’s testimony, which claimed a majority of senatorial districts were opposed to a Convention of States. Bill showed that wasn’t accurate. Even in those districts that put forth resolutions against an Article V COS, most of those districts also put forth resolutions in favor. And there were many districts who sent resolutions in favor that did not also have resolutions opposing. So if you look at the state overall, and the resolutions overall, the picture is quite different from what convinced the committee to strike the plank the night before.

The plank is back in, in shortened form, preserving what is necessary.

 

School Choice

There’s a moment here to talk about how important testimony can be. As we saw at our SD level, and as we prepared documents for the state platform, people are pretty upset with our schools. Parents want choice, transparency, and removal of anything that even hints at indoctrination. In the Education subcommittee, the room was cavernous. It was supposed to be divided but hadn’t been, so another committee got moved. What was left was bigger than the room we used for Committee of the Whole. People were lined up out the door for testimony. They took four hours of testimony, which placed them getting their work done and turned in to me around midnight, several hours later than scheduled. But it was important that the people got heard.

There is an ongoing split in the school choice world. A small but vocal minority of homeschoolers (homeschoolers as a whole are a small minority; this is a much smaller sub-minority) fear school choice, because they fear government might step in and regulate them. While I understand their arguments, I do not agree with them. We have to be vigilant against government intrusion regardless of what choices are offered to people who feel stuck in public schools. Fear of some nebulous possibility is no reason to deprive all those families trapped in the public school monopoly. If we introduce choice, we get the possibility of improvement.

This small minority is vocally active. They took part in the subcommittee debate, but they were outnumbered there with so much other testimony, much of it about breaking that monopoly somehow. But in testimony for permanent committee, where there is limited time for each section, they managed to fill all the slots, probably six or so individuals.

As they had hoped, they gave the impression that there was a huge outcry against the phrase “and the funding should follow the student,” claiming that isn’t possible without strings attached. Even if that were so—it is not—it wouldn’t attach strings to them if they’re not taking the money, so they’re really just interfering with other people’s decisions. Anyway, a committee member did bring up such an amendment. Subcommittee Chair Will Lutz spoke strongly against taking those words out. I looked forward to relistening to his speech in the livestream. It is here. He reminded people of the testimony they’d received from across the state. And he reminded them that every year school choice planks get watered down in committee, and then when the body of delegates see it, they put the strong school choice language back in—with loud acclamation. We should follow what the people in the state are telling us.

screenshot from here

I took a look at the starting document for education, which contains all the education resolutions from the 31 senatorial districts in the state. In addition to resolutions with wording in favor of school choice, there were 31 resolutions specifically stating that the money needs to follow the child. There were I think three resolutions in opposition to funding following the child. Chairman Lutz was right.

There were a couple of other speeches for and against the amendment. There was a committee member who homeschools, who spoke out well in favor of the money following the child.

And there was another committee member who pointed out that, when he got a GI bill, he could use it for education at a religious seminary, and the government had no say in that. They couldn’t tell him where he could study or what he could study; they could only insist that the money was spent on education. I appreciate that comparison. It’s how I’ve been seeing it. That is the freedom we want to give parents. Since the very next plank reiterates that government will not be allowed to regulate curriculum for homeschoolers or private schoolers, that ought to do. Again, we’re not writing law; we’re telling the legislature what we want and saying, “You figure it out.”

The amendment failed. But it was a close call—because of those final testimonies. It would have been such a sad day for all those who testified in subcommittee, if those final voices had gotten the last word.

 

Homosexuality and Gender Issues

There was an amendment that has gotten undue attention. A sentence was added at the beginning of the Homosexuality plank: “Homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice.” The rest was about not granting special legal entitlements or special status based on homosexual behavior or other LGBTQ identification. I was satisfied with the plank the way it was. The new language states basic fact, but it did cause an uproar on the committee, where we had one committee member who is a gay man—unknown to most of us, because he didn’t press for those issues and was overall pretty conservative and helpful. (I had suspected, because I'd heard him give reports from Log Cabin Republicans before.) So he felt personally hurt. I don’t believe that was the intention. You can hear the discussion starting here. If the purpose had been intended to provoke while being factual, it could have been, “Homosexuality is a perversion of normal human sexual reproduction,” perhaps. It wasn’t that inflammatory. But it did draw attention that the original might not have. And you can decide whether that is a good thing or not.

screenshot from here

 

Election Integrity

Election Integrity was a huge issue. There’s debate about whether paper ballots ought to be the solution or not. I believe they are not; there’s a “long and glorious tradition[i]” of voter fraud using paper, well established before machines were brought into the picture. That aside, there was a lot of agreement that we need better and stronger election integrity laws. We got what people are calling an A-Z plank, with bullet points covering most of the alphabet.  That was amended with one addition during floor debate that is probably also useful. Now we just need the legislature to go at it.

 

And that, actually, is what we need to do for the whole platform. Set it before the legislators, get their attention, remind them of the platform—which their constituents support. Train their staff to recognize the platform and refer to it continually. So, the platform, in tandem with Legislative Priorities, is kind of a blueprint for the Legislature. To quote my friend Terri again, “This is what we want done. Get busy. You figure it out.”

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[i] Princess Bride reference.