Getting emotional and upset about the price of gas, the economy, inflation, etc. and voting for Republicans in 2022 is like getting angry over a broken dish or something and smashing your fist into the wall.  It won’t accomplish a damned thing and it’s certain to result in extreme pain.  I would caution those who might be favoring the GOP this year to think long and hard about what will result from their choices.

Republican policies should be one of their first considerations.  That is, what are Republicans currently supporting and what do they oppose.  Unfortunately, that has gotten much harder to discern recently.  The national party didn’t draft an updated platform at its 2020 convention.  Instead, delegates produced a one-page resolution that incorporated the 2016 platform and basically stated that the party would support whatever then-President Trump wanted.

The Republican policy dearth continued into 2021.  At a private dinner with donors and GOP Senate candidates last November, according to an Axios source, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told his colleagues that he didn’t intend to introduce a legislative agenda before the 2022 midterms.  McConnell wants Republicans to wait for an updated GOP platform to be adopted in 2024 and be 100% focused this year on lambasting Democrats for their failures. 

Donors typically want to know what their money is buying, however, so one of them at this meeting asked what GOP candidates would be proposing to help them win.  McConnell simply replied that the party wouldn’t be doing that.  Better to have no agenda than one that can be attacked by opponents, right?

Well, it doesn’t appear to me that Mitch is eager to help Democrats accomplish anything.

Yet, not all Republican politicians agree with the minority leader.  I’ve written previously about an 11-Point Plan to Rescue America rolled out by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) last February.  Scott is the current leader of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and it appears he wants the party’s Senate candidates to run on his plan.  While many of them would probably be happy to do that, McConnell publicly rebuked Scott for this effort and aggressively shut it down.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) also wanted to draft a legislative agenda leading to the 2022 midterms, according to Axios.  He announced the appointment of seven issue-specific taskforces in June 2021 that are “designed to identify and develop policy solutions to the issues facing the American people.”  Last November he announced the first issue specific proposal House Republicans will promote, the Parents Bill of Rights. GOP House members have not produced a second proposal since then, to my knowledge, and I doubt if they will.  McConnell will see to that.

Okay, I think we can stop right here.  Why should any voter believe that Republicans will work with Democrats to help solve any of our current problems before the 2024 election, or thereafter, for that matter?  It’s obvious that they have a totally different agenda. 

Just consider the platform that delegates concocted last week at the Texas GOP convention.  I believe it proposes some of the most radical ideas that a Republican assemblage has ever produced in a single document.

Here are just some of its bombshells, many of which I believe grassroots Republicans all over the country would likely support. 

The Texas Republican platform:

• Rejects the certified results of the 2020 Presidential election, and holds that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected.

• Supports repeal of the 16th Amendment (Federal Income Tax)

• Supports the privatization of the Social Security system.

• Rejects the “bipartisan gun agreement” and rebukes Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), etc.

• Holds that homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice that shouldn’t be protected under the law.

• Urges legislation to abolish abortion from the moment of fertilization.

• Urges repeal of all limits on candidate and campaign contributions by U.S. citizens.

• Supports defunding and abolishing virtually all federal government departments and agencies that are not authorized by the Constitution, including the Federal Reserve.

• Supports withdrawal from the United Nations and removal of the UN from U.S. soil.

• States that all gun control is a violation of the Second Amendment.

• Urges that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 be repealed, and

• Suggests that Texans vote on seceding from the United States.

Voters need to read this seditious, 40-page, 273 proposal document (Access it here.) to understand how strongly it promotes returning America to the 19^th Century. 

They should also watch a video of the delegates at this convention soundly booing Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn when he attempted to speak about the bipartisan gun safety bill he is negotiating.  And they need to watch and hear some convention attendees harassing Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw – a conservative former Navy Seal who lost one eye fighting in Afghanistan – calling him “eye-patch McCain” because he supported Ukraine in its war with Russia and suggesting he be hung for treason. 

These hard right Texas convention delegates are a classic example of the inmates taking over the asylum.

I’m confident, however, that the more the Trumpian Republicans put their anti-democracy proposals under the media microscope, the more likely that voters will reject the candidates that support them.  That’s why McConnell has been adamant against drafting a legislative agenda this year.  He knows that it will show how Republicans have no interest in fixing today’s problems – and he’s right.