Chip Taylor

Moderation and party platforms

Joshua Claybourn notes that the Indiana GOP has a more moderate abortion plank in its platform than does the National GOP.

The national GOP, which would seem to require a more moderate stance on abortion because of the national makeup, actually has a much, much more conservative stance. Food for thought.

It seems reasonable to me that the national platfrom would be less, rather than more, moderate. While platforms are at least partially about communicating a party's stance on issues to the public at large, it is important to remember two things.

First, only a tiny majority of people will ever actually read the text of a party platform -- pretty much no one but partisan activists and not all of them. For that reason, party activists tend to care much more about the actual language in a platform and how strongly and clearly it advocates a position. Which brings us to the second thing.

Second, party platforms are also about defining the party's stance on an issue and distinguishing it from other parties. (This isn't exactly the same as communicating the party's stance.) Therefore, platforms tend to be written by people who really care what the platform says -- those who feel most strongly that their party is not and should not be like the others.

The opportunity costs of attending a national convention are much higher than those of attending a state convention, so national platforms get written by people who really really care how their party defines its stance on an issue. State conventions, requiring less travel and so forth, are probably more likely to exhibit the range of opinion that exists within a party. So, at the national convention there is less impetus to "recogniz[e] the diversity of opinion among members of our party."

It's sort of like the difference between presidential primary campaigning and general election comapaigning.