Scott County Republican leadership strives to please QC Times
There we were double checking the Scott County Democrats Party Website (SCDP) to see who our Republican candidates would be up against. By the way they actually list all of their candidates, something which the Scott County Republican Party (SCRP) still has not done at this writing. One would think it would be an elementary part of a Web site presentation, what with voting beginning in less than a month. Anyway while we were there we took a look at the SCDP 2014 Platform.
It seems the memo from the Quad City Times to turn party platforms into unresponsive irrelevant collections of a few platitudes,* which the QC Times is happy to flesh out for the parties, explaining what the platitudes mean, and which public matters to act on, did not register with Scott County Democrats. Comparing our printout of the SCDP 2012 platform to their most recent we see that their platform has about the same number of planks for 2014 (246) as 2012 (250). They even added a section — “Veterans.”
We also note that their platform committee has very few holdovers from the previous committee. Which, given the consistency of results, can be interpreted as widespread support for making the document extensively relevant. The SCDP Platform Committee Chair was a holdover, which makes sense. We do not believe the Scott Republican Chair had any previous experience with the parties platform formulation, and from what we can tell scant involvement with Republican politics.
Scott County Republican leadership took the QC Times bait and saw to the gutting of most of the specificity in previous platforms and therefore substantive relevancy to issues of the day. The Republican platform was reduced from 258 planks in 2012 to 58 in 2014 practically destroying the grassroots meaning of the precinct caucuses where the platform process begins.
As culturally degenerative, economically irresponsible, super-regulatory, and anti-business as the SCDP platform is, you can find a position on matters of the day and figure out what they think is important. The Democrats no more write legislation in their platform than Republican were accused of doing. Nor is it a wish list because you can be assured that Democrats introduce legislation relevant to the planks they set forth. Republicans, not so much. R Mall
* see related articles here and here and in these pages via the search term “platform”
