The Texas Republican platform was once considered the musings of the most fringe elements of the party, mocked or ignored by elected leaders and most others.
Folks aren’t laughing anymore.
While the platform still contains wacky planks, such as calls to return to the gold standard monetary system, many proposals once thought too extreme are becoming public policy.
Examples include laws related to guns, abortion and transgender residents and policies that address former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election grievances.
As Texas elected leaders adopt these platform proposals, the obscure delegates who huddle in a convention center room to develop them are now some of the most influential political players in the state.
“You can look at a lot of different issues, whether it’s on abortion, LGBTQ rights, voting rights, and the list goes on,” said Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie and chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “When they’re initially proposed, people kind of roll their eyes and shake their heads and say, ‘Oh, that’ll never happen.’ But within a few short years, those proposals have become priority items for Republicans in the Legislature.”
Former Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville, said the fringes of both political parties are controlling politics because most Texans aren’t voting in primaries.
“The convention and the platform committee represent the extreme right of the Republican Party, not the average rank-and-file Republican,” said Deuell, who in 2014 lost a primary runoff to Sen. Bob Hall of Edgewood, a proponent of the new permitless carry gun law and other conservative planks, such as banning gender-affirming surgery for those under 18.
“You’ve got a smaller group of people controlling the party now,” Deuell said. “That’s because of low primary turnout.”
In June, the Texas GOP approved a platform that declared President Joe Biden’s 2020 election was not legitimate. The document more than 5,000 delegates ratified also called homosexuality “an abnormal lifestyle choice,” deemed gender identity disorder “a genuine and extremely rare mental health condition” and required official documents to adhere to “biological gender.”
While some across the country decried Texas Republicans, many of those items will inform bills filed in the 2023 legislative session, serving as a guide for lawmakers who are influenced by the most conservative elements of the GOP.
“Regardless of what people say about the platform, it becomes ingrained within the Republican Party,” Republican consultant Matthew Langston said. “Pushing back on it as elected officeholder usually means that they are not as in tune to the party that they are associated with as they would want you to believe.”
Through a campaign spokesperson, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott did not comment on the GOP platform.
Platform drives GOP legislative agenda
Texas Republicans lead the way in crafting conservative laws that often push the boundaries of being too extreme, critics say. Republicans defend the policies as in step with a majority of Texas voters. After all, they’ve dominated the state since seizing control of the Texas House in 2002.
Consider the 2016 Texas GOP platform, approved months before Trump got the Republican nomination for president.
The document called for abolishing abortion, allowing guns to be carried without a permit and the building of a border wall, one of Trump’s most provocative campaign proposals.
In six years, all three legislative priorities have become public policy.
Abbott signed into law last year a bill banning abortion for women after six weeks of pregnancy, as well as a so-called trigger law banning nearly all abortions in anticipation of the Supreme Court striking down Roe vs. Wade.
Since 2016, lawmakers have made it easier for Texans to carry guns openly, on college campuses and without a permit, a policy law enforcement officials across the state denounced.
“When I first got to the Legislature in 2009, the idea of open carry was really laughed off by most Republicans,” Turner said. “That was viewed as kind of a fringe issue, but a short six years later, in 2015, the Legislature passed open carry and campus carry.”
Some Texas Republicans in 2016 were skeptical about Trump’s call for a border wall. Now, Abbott is building a Texas wall, as outlined in the GOP platform.
Of the platform’s five legislative priorities, only two have failed to gain traction — replacing property taxes with another revenue source and convening a convention to diminish the power of the federal government.
A few GOP platform planks from 2016 and other years have received bipartisan support, including curbing human trafficking.
But for the most part, the platform is an illustration of the Republicans’ push to the right, especially after the emergence of Trump.
How Trump has influenced Texas laws
Trump wields a heavy influence on the GOP platform and on Texas laws.
Even before Texas Republicans at this year’s convention declared Biden’s 2020 election illegitimate, the GOP-controlled Legislature had made sweeping changes in the aftermath of Trump’s bogus narrative. The election law Abbott signed last year restricts mail-in ballots, a system the former president says is ripe with fraud.
Republicans pushed through the controversial legislation even as they said Texas elections were fair and smooth.
Democrats, who staged several House quorum breaks to stall the bill, say the law suppresses votes.
With the 2020 election’s inclusion in the GOP platform, voters can expect more laws aimed at curbing mail-in ballots, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s pledge to stiffen penalties for fraud.
Preparing for another red-meat feat in 2023
Other GOP platform items that lawmakers could consider include school choice, which would allow parents to use state-funded vouchers to send their children to private schools. Abbott advocated for the program in May.
Republican lawmakers have also signaled that they are not finished trying to push legislation that applies to transgender residents.
The platform calls for monetary compensation for “detransitioners” who have received gender-affirming surgery, a target of Patrick and other GOP leaders that the platform calls a form of medical malpractice. Bills to ban it for those under 18 passed the Senate under Patrick but failed in the House.
“We passed gender modification surgery two times. It never got a hearing (in the House),” Patrick told delegates at the Texas GOP convention. “I will pass it again and again and again until it passes because it’s child abuse.”
Patrick also told convention delegates that he will work to ban taxpayer-funded lobbyists in state government.
While he didn’t discuss the platform during the convention, House Speaker Dade Phelan said conservative policies lawmakers approved last year would appeal to voters in November.
“Tell me about those bills that aren’t God, country and family,” Phelan said during a reception. “They embody those three elements. I feel pretty good about November and pretty darn good about what we did in the 87th session to attract those people who just want personal freedom.”
But Phelan is resisting a GOP platform plank that calls on him to stop appointing Democrats to lead House committees, and legislators in the minority party are preparing to fight bills from the far right.
“We can all agree that we have lots of issues and lots of things that we need to work on in the state of Texas, like keeping the lights on and making sure kids are safe,” said Rep. Jessica Gonzalez, D-Dallas. “It’s unfortunate that Republicans want to distract people from the real issues that we need to be working on.”
Gonzalez, who has fought against legislation aimed at transgender residents, said Republicans should realize their conservative agenda comes at a cost, including gun policies.
“They don’t realize that these policy ideas or their platform actually hurts many people,” she said. “Instead, we made it easier to get guns.”
Turner said elected Republicans aren’t ashamed of their party’s platform, so he doesn’t expect them to stop the onslaught of conservative legislation.
“The days of Gov. George W. Bush saying, ‘Oh, I don’t read the platform,’ are over,” Turner said. “This Republican leadership does take seriously what’s in their platform. A lot of times they act upon it, and that’s to the detriment of Texans.”
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