ignoring the Republican platform would be a mistake.
Last week, before Saturday’s horrible attempt to assassinate former President Trump, the Republican Party issued its 2024 platform. This is noteworthy because the party did not adopt a platform four years ago.
In the run-up to its 2020 convention, the GOP said it “did not want a small contingent of delegates formulating a new platform without the breadth of perspectives within the ever-growing Republican movement.” Instead of adopting a new platform, the party reaffirmed its 2016 platform and announced that it would “continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.”
The release of this year’s platform has garnered little attention thus far. That is not surprising given the news media’s seemingly all-consuming focus on the aftermath of the June 27 presidential debate and the prominence of the Project 2025 Presidential Transition Document, and now the assassination attempt.
Some people may be tempted dismiss the significance of the platform and to agree with what 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole said about the platform adopted that year: “I’m not bound by the platform. I probably agree with most everything in it, but I haven’t read it.”
But ignoring the Republican platform would be a mistake. It offers a glimpse into what the party and Donald Trump are trying to get Americans to believe about the country they are living in and about what they will do if they win in November.
The platform also offers a window into the complete Trumpification of the GOP. That is captured most clearly in its stated purpose: “to Make America Great Again!”
Before looking more closely at the 2024 Republican Party Platform, let me explain why party platforms matter.
Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution says that party platforms are important in several ways, arguing that “they are crucial tests of presidential nominee’s ability to control the platform writing process and put his distinctive mark on the party’s message to the electorate.”
They are “statements of political philosophies and issue positions” which, Mann contends, “make clear that there is substantially more than a dime’s worth of difference between the two major parties.” Platforms are roadmaps to “campaign strategies, policy agendas, and relations with … parties’ key constituencies.”
Finally, Mann notes that party platforms provide “a remarkably accurate guide to what a presidential ticket and political party will pursue in office.”
Political scientist Marjorie Hersey reinforces this point by saying, “Researchers find that when a party controls Congress and the White House, its spending priorities reflect issues emphasized in its platform most of the time.” Moreover, Hersey writes, “Changes in the platform are often significant indicators of change in the party.”
One can see such a change by looking back to the 1980 Republican Party Platform.
In that document, Republicans “dropped the party’s longstanding commitment to the Equal Rights Amendment and adopted strong anti-abortion language.” Hersey says that was “clear evidence of the shift toward right-wing conservatism that now characterizes the Republican Party.”
Indeed, elements of continuity exist between 1980 and this year’s document, which commentators should not miss when they compare Trump’s Republican Party to Ronald Raegan’s.
Coming on the heels of a period of high inflation and international crisis, the GOP’s 1980 platform said, “Our foremost goal here at home is simple: economic growth and full employment without inflation. Sweeping change in economic policy in America is needed … with Republican policies that promise economic growth and job creation.”
The Republican’s proffered solution was “a bold program of tax rate reductions, spending restraints, and regulatory reforms that will inject new life into the economic bloodstream of this country.”
Turning to foreign policy, the 1980 platform said, “Overseas, our goal is … to preserve a world at peace by keeping America strong.” In almost Trumpian language, the platform claimed, “Never before in modern history has the United States endured as many humiliations, insults, and defeats as it has during the past four years.” It promised to reverse America's international humiliation and decline “by a major upgrading of our military forces.”
This year’s Republican platform echoes some of those same themes. But it does so by distorting or ignoring the current realties of American life.
Taking its cue from Trump’s description of American carnage in his 2017 inaugural address, the 2024 Republican platform states, “[W]e are a nation in SERIOUS DECLINE. Our future, our identity, our very way of life are under threat like never before.”
To document that decline, it says that “America is now rocked by Raging Inflation, Open Borders, rampant crime, attacks on her children and global conflict, chaos, and instability.” It says that Republicans will tame inflation and “make America affordable again.”
Here it seems that Republicans are inviting Americans to ignore the reality unfolding before their eyes. Inflation is now running around 3 percent. And as economist Paul Krugman notes, “Gas prices and grocery prices are “as affordable, as measured by the prices compared with the average hourly earnings of nonmanagerial workers, as they were in 2019.”
Additionally, we are experiencing declining crime rates and an historically unprecedented period of strength in the American military and our global alliances.
In an odd move, the Republican platform promises to “unleash American energy (and) … (b)ecome energy independent and even dominant again.” Here, too, one wonders whether it matters to the Republicans that the United States is producing more energy than it has ever done before and has already achieved energy independence.
Following the economic logic of the 1980 platform, the Republicans again are promising massive tax cuts and rapid deregulation. But in its 2024 version, it adds a populist twist by promising that if the Republicans are returned to power, they will eliminate taxes on tips for millions of restaurant and hospitality workers even as they will make massive tax cuts for the rich permanent.
There are, of course, differences between what the Republicans were saying in 1980 and what they’re saying now, even if they were painting the same kind of gloom-and-doom scenario for the United States back then. This year’s platform raises alarms about immigration and also denounces “globalism.” It promises to be tough on China and to implement an “America first economic policy.” But, like its 1980 predecessor, it says Republicans will strengthen the American military as an essential foreign policy tool.
The 2024 platform singles out some now familiar targets, namely left-wing assaults on religious freedom (especially Christian religious freedom) and critical race theory in education. But it tones down the assault on rights and the promise of retribution that have animated the Trump campaign. Indeed, it commits the Republican Party to “defend our Constitution, our Bill of Rights and our fundamental freedoms.”
In the end, the platform the Republicans will adopt in the wake of the failed attempt on Donald Trump’s life offers a set of diagnoses and promises that have long been part of the party’s playbook. This year, it adds an extra helping of smoke and mirrors to the party's governing program.
If the commentators are right about the way platforms structure how parties govern, the 2024 platform offers little reason to believe that the Republican Party would govern wisely.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.
