If you have read their just adopted platform, the current Republican Party sure seems like the old Republican Party:
- Republicans oppose marriage equality.
- Republicans oppose abortion rights for women.
- Republicans oppose women in military combat.
- Republicans oppose funding for Planned Parenthood.
- Republicans oppose legalizing medical (or any other kind of) marijuana.
- Republicans oppose allowing legally married gay couples to adopt children.
- Republicans oppose transgender rights.
- Republicans call porn a “public health crisis.”
- Republicans support “conversion therapy” for gay teenagers.
- Republicans support the bible being taught as literature in public schools.
The GOP platform is, once again, a moralizing, deeply Victorian, critical document of how the modern American family has evolved. To many voters, especially millennials, it looks more 1916 than 2016.
And that would be understandable if the delegates were meeting in Cleveland to nominate someone who represents such a conservative platform, say, Senator Ted Cruz.
But they are not.
They are nominating Donald J. Trump. A billionaire casino owning reality TV host from New York City.
Trump has been married three times, divorced twice after having multiple affairs. He has claimed he has had sex with some of the “top women of the world.” He once called Bill Clinton a “terrific guy” who did “an amazing job” and commented, “How about me with the women? Can you imagine?” when asked about the Clinton impeachment.
He has made millions from gambling, an industry that exploits personal vice and destroys families according to many evangelicals. His companies have declared bankruptcy multiple times, totaling billions of dollars in debt, forcing him to sell off assets and leaving small businesses and investors holding his bills.
But that’s not all.
Trump called for the impeachment of the last Republican president George W. Bush. He also repeated many times during the campaign that Bush was responsible for allowing the 9/11 attacks to happen. He opposes free trade, a staple of modern Republicanism. He has also called for universal health care, which is far and beyond what Obamacare covers.
He has been on both sides of the abortion issue, he was a registered independent who almost ran for president on the Reform Party ticket 16 years ago, and he has contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi.
The Donald hardly represents a Victorian candidate of virtue and evangelical living, in fact, he may be the poster boy of the opposite.
The hypocrisy and absurdity between such a conservative platform, and the nomination of Donald J. Trump, makes it difficult to take Republicans very seriously in 2016.