GOP Convention — Pro-Life Platform

Liberal blogger John Deeth (the guy with the red beret) has a post about Republican bloggers' responses to the GOP Convention. I saw Deeth at our 2nd District Convention and introduced myself to him this weekend at the state convention. It is an interesting coincidence that immediately after linking to this blog, he writes about the Right to Life section in the platform. Deeth notes:

... I found it interesting that the "right to life" (sic) section was the very first item in the platform.

There is a history behind the placement of the Right to Life section in the beginning of the platform. In the 1996 State Platform (and previous platforms) pro-life planks were in a platform section labeled Health and Human Services. Over time these planks became the majority of the section in both length and number.

In 1998 I served as Secretary of the State Platform Committee under Committee Chairman Chuck Hurley (now with Iowa Family Policy Center). I got to be secretary primarily because I was the one with the laptop computer. Before the committee met, I assembled the platforms from all five congressional districts and put them into a single document. Since each district defined their sections differently, I made judgment calls about what sections to define and what planks to place in them.

The most significant thing I did as secretary was re-order and re-define the sections (and chair most of the meeting at the State Convention when Hurley had to leave). I decided to create a new section call Right to Life. When I presented it to the committee, I told them that my hope was that each year when Republicans met in their county,  district and state platform committees, they would debate, not whether the Health and Human Services section should be pro-life, but rather which pro-life statements should we put in our Right to Life section.

Since the platform sections are traditionally arranged alphabetically, Right to Life always appeared last. This year the platform committee (I chaired the Rules Committee so I was not involved in the platform) changed the name of the section from Right to Life to A Right to Life. Therefore when the sections are ordered alphabetically, A Right to Life comes first.

Comments

[John Deeth]

Thanks for the history lesson. And some things are the same across party lines: "I got to be secretary primarily because I was the one with the laptop computer." :)