The 5 Weirdest Bits in the 2012 GOP Platform

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/6262125642/sizes/l/">DonkeyHotey</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The Republican Party platform for 2012 proclaims itself “a statement of who we are and what we believe as a Party and our vision for a stronger and freer America.” It’s also got some pretty strange things in it. Here are five of the weirdest:

Anti-Shariah. The right-wing conspiracy theory that American Muslims are engaged in a “stealth jihad” meant to replace the Constitution with Taliban-style Islamic law isn’t mentioned explicitly in the Republican platform. But the document does refer to it obliquely. “There must be no use of foreign law by US courts in interpreting our Constitution and laws,” the platform reads. “Nor should foreign sources of law be used in State courts; adjudication of criminal or civil matters.” This language is the result of the efforts of Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State who has helped author many of the country’s restrictive immigration laws. “[S]ometimes defenses are raised that are based in Shariah Law,” Kobach warned while explaining his support for this section. The Constitution prevents any religious law from superseding civil or criminal law, and this language wouldn’t just impact Muslims—Orthodox Jews in the US often resolve civil matters according to Jewish law

See Wah/FotopediaSee Wah/Fotopedia

The UN is coming! The GOP platform treats the United Nations as a sinister force encroaching on American sovereignty. Though some of this is mere disagreement on policy, elements of the platform incorporate nods to conspiracy theories, like language that says the party “reject[s] the UN Agenda 21 as erosive of American sovereignty, and we oppose any form of UN Global Tax.” As my colleague Stephanie Mencimer reported in 2010, Agenda 21 is a two-decade-old toothless international commitment to sustainable development (“smart-growth communism”) that has roused the imaginations of tea partiers everywhere. Meanwhile, as Foreign Policy‘s Joshua Keating notes, the UN does not have the authority to impose a “Global Tax.” I suppose that’s a great reason to oppose it!

 Gibsons/Shutterstock

Bring back the gold standard? Invoking a Ronald Reagan-era commission convened to “consider the feasibility of a metallic basis for U.S. currency,” the GOP platform calls for “a similar commission to investigate possible ways to set a fixed value for the dollar.” For some reason, going back to the gold standard is believed on some corners of the right to be a panacea for economic instability, but we’ll just let the New York Times‘ Paul Krugman explain why this isn’t true: “[U]nder the gold standard America had no major financial panics other than in 1873, 1884, 1890, 1893, 1907, 1930, 1931, 1932, and 1933.”

 Mykl Roventine/Fotopedia Mykl Roventine/Fotopedia

No more race-based governments in the US. At first glance, it might seem strange that the GOP platform states that the party opposes “the creation of any new race-based governments within the United States.” But this language isn’t referring to hundreds of years of slavery, oppression, and racial discrimination—it’s referencing a dispute over legislation that would grant Native Hawaiians the same kind of status as Native American tribes in the continental United States. 

Tomas Del Amo/ShutterstockTomas Del Amo/Shutterstock 

Banning Bibles on military facilities. In the interest of protecting the US military from imminent communist subversion, the GOP platform proclaims that “A Republican Commander in Chief will protect religious independence of military chaplains and will not tolerate attempts to ban Bibles or religious symbols from military facilities.” This ominous language refers to an embarrassing mistake at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where hospital officials, in an attempt to prevent people from proselytizing to wounded service members, seemingly banned visitors from giving religious items to those receiving care at the facility. Though officials say the policy was never enforced, Republicans quickly pounced on this as proof the Obama administration was trying to purge Christianity from the armed services. Now it’s part of the GOP platform. 

  Dulce Rubia/Shutterstock Dulce Rubia/Shutterstock

Read the full text of the GOP’s 2012 platform below.

 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate