Henry Haller wrote: HH) The platform is absolutely NOT a document for reaching voters. As has been stated many times before in this forum, no sane candidate - of any party - hands out his party platform as outreach to voters. Our candidates are the interface with voters, and it is up to them to fashion their campaign issues to suit the current needs of the voters. The platform is an expression of our principles as a party, and stays in the background, and (hopefully) never changes to any significant degree, regardless of the high profile issues of the day. (HH
Speaking as a reform leader on the PlatCom, I want to say that Henry (a relative radical on PlatCom) is exactly right. Thom Gray wrote: TG) I tend to think the steps the PC took in 2006 were largely recognized as necessary intermediate steps: shorten the platform, include the most relevant issues, et (TG The 2006 PlatCom made no recommendation whatsoever about what issues are more "relevant" than other. The LP has a hard enough time agreeing on what to say about the issues in the Platform, without also arguing about how to rank them in importance. That's one of the multiple reasons why it's completely unrealistic for reformers to hope that the Platform can be replaced with a top-N-issues program. They don't understand that as the number of issues covered by the Platform goes down, the contentiousness about what issues to include will actually will go UP. TG) our current platform, which was taken mostly from old planks, is woefully short on issues that matter most to voters in this cycles, especially illegal immigration and the War in Iraq (as opposed to just "War"). So why are we talking like we're going to revise the platform in '08, never to revise again? (TG Each year's Platform is required by the Bylaws to be based on the existing Platform, and the LP has never come remotely close to demonstrating the institutional bandwidth necessary for adopting a platform or program that is written from scratch to target the issues of the current election cycle. Even when the LP had an official program, it hardly changed at all from 1992 to 2002. People who, like the Restoration Caucus, talk as if anybody intended for the 2006 Platform to have precisely the issue coverage it has, or that reformers propose that the 2006 Platform be the starting point for the 2008 Platform, are simply ignorant -- or disingenuous. Every reform proposal starts with erasing the 2006 Platform and starting with a clean sheet of paper.
