From the Party of Lincoln to the Party of Calhoun: Texas Edition

Henrik Hertzberg reports on the latest Texas Republican Party Platform.   It includes risible attempts to frame bully window the Overton pulpit:

We strongly support a woman’s right to choose to devote her life to her family and children.

And if they don’t choose that, we’ll do everything we can to choose it for them! Some of the things that Texas Republican Party wishes to eliminate:

• The Voting Rights Act
• Personal-income taxes
• Property taxes
• Estate taxes
• Capital-gains taxes
• Franchise and business-income taxes
• The gift tax
• Minimum-wage laws
• Social Security (“We support an immediate and orderly transition to a system of private pensions”)
• The Environmental Protection Agency
• The Department of Education and all its functions
• “Unelected bureaucrats”
• Supreme Court jurisdiction in cases involving abortion, religious freedom, and the Bill of Rights. [I’m guessing that #2 will be eliminated from the next edition…]
• The Federal Reserve
• “Foreign aid, except in cases of national defense or catastrophic disasters, with Congressional approval”
• Obamacare (but you knew that already)

And of particular relevance given the Hobby Lobby ruling:

All adult citizens should have the legal right to conscientiously choose which vaccines are administered to themselves, or their minor children, without penalty for refusing a vaccine. We oppose any effort by any authority to mandate such vaccines.

Whether employers will be permitted under judicial interpretations of RFRA to exclude immunizations from coverage will depend on whether immunization becomes a Republican culture war obsession like contraception. This is not a good sign.

And there is plenty more crackpottery where this came from; indeed, pretty much every plank should properly be followed by “P.S.: WE ARE NOT CRANKS.” If Rick Perry runs again he’s going to have even more gibberish to forget during debates.