Conservative Partying, Part II: Legislative Priorities and (part of) Platform

 

Today is Part II of my debrief of the Texas Republican Convention. Part I is here.

I thought I would do Legislative Priorities and Platform in one post, but this has gotten ridiculously long. So I’m going to split it, and cover Platform & Resolutions in a Part III. (I’m assuming you’ll thank me later.) Most of it is written, so I should get Part III posted in a day or so. Thank you for your patience. I’m still quicker at getting this out than RPT is.

The convention ended Saturday, June 13. After two other editors did formatting and general edits, I spent all of Monday and Tuesday after convention doing a careful edit. There was integrating those changes and finishing indexing, and then a meeting between the Editorial Committee Chair, the RPT Secretary, and the Platform Committee Chair to go over any edits that needed approval—and to add the changes that were made on the floor of the convention, which I believe added one plank and one resolution, plus some other amendments to planks. I have not seen the final wording of those floor changes, other than what I saw on screen at convention. I do not understand the delay following convention to get those to the editors; a process changed after 2022, apparently.

But as of today, as I begin writing on Thursday, June 25, no updated version has been posted since the printed (and online) Permanent Committee Report for either Platform, Rules, or Legislative Priorities.

So we do not yet know the results of the scantron voting. We do not have a list of 8 Legislative Priorities, narrowed down from the 15 presented by the Permanent Committee. And we do not have the edited version of the Platform, which should include those floor changes, and the final numbering.

So all I can write about today is what we voted on, not what the results are.

To see the version we saw for floor debate, you can go here (until they move it or change it). 

I could also mention that this wasn’t that easy to find. I tried the TexasGOP.org site; I found nothing but the 2024 versions there. I couldn’t even find Convention information, other than on the calendar, telling me that event had passed.

I tried looking up the convention, which is a separate site: convention.TexasGOP.org. And all I could find were the schedules provided for convention goers.

So I did another search and found these versions on the “about” page of the convention website, and scrolled down and found the links I needed.

It shouldn’t be this hard, especially for somebody who has been paying attention all along.

If you’d like to watch the floor debates, LP and Platform happened on June 13. Floor debate for Chair election and Rules happened on June 12. And the Permanent Committees were on June 11. Temporary Committee of the Whole for Platform was Jun 10. You can find several of the livestreams on YouTube. 

Legislative Priorities

Legislative Priorities Committee was an addition not that long ago. We added them as part of our Platform Report in our Senatorial District 7 Convention in I think 2016 and 2018. And then Mark Ramsey, the 2018 State Platform Chair, had persuaded RPT to add Legislative Priorities as a separate committee, and was the first Chair of that committee in 2020.

The purpose of Platform is to guide mainly the Texas Legislature (and also some direction to other state leaders and to the US Congress) to know what the grassroots cares about.

The platform continues to be long, with lots of specific details. As we get ignored, we add more details.

There’s so much there, in the RPT Platform, it seemed like a good idea (I think it is) to tell the Legislature what is most important. That’s what Legislative Priorities is intended to do. LPs are, then, an extension to the Platform; in fact, each LP must relate to at least one plank in the Platform. So there’s some communication between these two committees during Convention Committee meetings.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Conservative Partying, Part I: Festivities, Election of Officers, and Rules

 

Last week was the state Republican Party of Texas Convention, June 11-13, with preliminary meetings starting June 8. It was held here in Houston, at the George R. Brown Convention Center, one of just a few facilities in the state big enough to handle this large convention. (The other cities are San Antonion, Dallas, and Ft. Worth, so it’s always going to be in one of these cities.)

There were festivities. But there was also business: elections of officers, and setting the Rules, Legislative Priorities, and Platform for the upcoming biennium. I spent my time editing the platform again (I know I’d said I wouldn’t do it again, but at least I didn’t lead the team or work through any nights). So I’ll cover the other business first and then spend a bit more time on Platform.

Festivities

There was a live elephant. I missed when it came into the main hall, but I saw it in the exhibit hall, behind Governor Abbott, where people were getting photos. They closed the line just before I got there, so I didn’t get pictures with me in them.

Governor Abbott taking photos with supporters

 An elephant, indoors, is pretty awesome. My guess is the Democrats won’t try to compete with a live donkey at theirs. It would be an offense to donkeys, as Ted Cruz quipped.

There were speeches, and songs. Some of the music was really good. I missed much of that, because I don’t get there in mornings, especially when I didn’t get to bed before 3:00 AM. I did listen to livestreams on YouTube. Go to the RPT channel and choose what you want to see.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

The Bill of Rights: Celebrating the Semiquincentennial, Part VI

We’re reaching the halfway point—and approaching the actual July 4^th birthday—in our celebration of the 250^th birthday of our nation. So far we’ve celebrated by walking through our founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, and the Preamble and first three Articles of the Constitution, covering the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.

If we were simply walking straight through, we’d get to Article IV on through VII of the Constitution. Maybe we’ll come back to these in more detail, but for now let’s just summarize those articles:

Article 4 covers interstate rules, and guarantees for citizens going state to state. There are four sections, including information about how new states may be admitted, and how the federal government guarantees protection to each of the states.

Article 5 offers ways to amend the Constitution: amendments can be proposed by either two-thirds of both Houses, or two-thirds of the state legislatures can propose an amendment. This option has been talked of more in the past few years; 20 states so far have voted to go ahead (including my state of Texas), out of a needed 34.

Article 6 talks about paying debts incurred by the national government, and that the federal government shall be the supreme law of the land.

Article 7 talks about ratification of the Constitution, and signatures from representatives of the states at the Constitutional Convention, where the document was written and revised.

Next come the Amendments. There are 27. The first 10 are what we call the Bill of Rights. And that’s the topic for today’s post. Even so, we might not cover all 10. I’m going to go through a little history and background and at least cover the First Amendment. And since there could be books and books written on the First Amendment, we’ll mostly just get to the first right in the First Amendment.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.