Trump took many of those traditional establishment elements with him to the White House in January 2017, but by the time he ran for reelection in 2020, they were long gone, replaced as surely as the party had been replaced, the administration too: the Republican Party was now MAGA.
Nowhere is this change more clearly reflected than in the quadrennial document that outlines the party’s formal platform.
In 2012, the document reflected the party that nominated Mitt Romney as its candidate, and began with a solemn and explicit dedication to “the wisdom of the Framers of the Constitution, who gave us a Republic, if only we could keep it, as Benjamin Franklin warned.” It was a satire of incumbent Democrat Barack Obama, who the party and its media apparatus have often portrayed as a dangerous threat to democracy.
This week, the party approved its 2024 policy platform. This year’s platform is dedicated to “America’s Forgotten Men and Women.”
The 2016 platform, caught between the Republican and MAGA eras, looked more like the 2012 platform than the 2024 platform. It was dedicated to “all those who stand strong in the face of danger.” [s]o that the American people will be protected against,” referring to the military and first responders. Like the 2012 document, it provides a detailed description of the party officials who led its development and presents in lofty terms the platform and the party’s role in American politics.
By 2020, the shift to Trump was immediately evident in the party platform. In fact, it wasn’t even a platform, just a resolution calling interested parties back to the 2016 platform. The essence of the platform was, “The Republican Party has always and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America First agenda,” whatever that may be.
This year’s platform is a little more fleshed out, but not by much, and it is clearly the product of Trump himself, not the party — quite literally, given that he reportedly dictated the platform’s structure and wording.
The result is a document that is longer than the one submitted in 2020 but much shorter than those submitted in 2012 and 2016. The Republican platform that first nominated Trump in 2016 was more than six times longer than the one he drafted this year.
The focus of the documents has also shifted. The 2012 and 2016 platforms mention abortion more than 50 times. The 2024 document mentions abortion only once. Of course, the 2012 and 2016 documents were longer, but compared to their size, they each contain a much smaller focus on abortion, which Trump hopes to push into the background during the general election.
This is true of other traditionally Republican issues, such as “entitlements” like cutting spending on Social Security and Medicare, and the federal debt or deficit. On the contrary, the 2024 document spends far more time discussing immigration (and immigration), and far more time talking about the U.S.-Mexico border.
(The 2020 document is too brief to be included in the chart above.)
There’s another notable difference: The new platform mentions the candidate himself nearly 20 times; the 2012 platform mentioned Romney just once.
Another piece of evidence that the 2024 platform document was written by and for Donald Trump is its distinctive use of capital letters. Trump’s haphazard use of capital letters has long been a hallmark of his writing, from “the American people” to “deep state” and “nation.” In general, about 2% of the words in the document are capitalized, which was the percentage of capitalized words in the 2012 and 2016 platforms.
About 12 percent of the text in the 2024 Policy Platform is in capital letters.
There’s a reason the 2024 document is shorter than the 2012 and 2016 documents, and it’s another indicator of Trump’s hand: it doesn’t offer many details. It often makes vague promises without explaining what they mean or how to achieve them, like asserting that “the Republican Party supports restoring classical liberal arts education.” Right?
What makes this Trumpian is that it’s vague, that it tries to make its case as palatable as possible in the typical way a salesman tries to close a deal. (In the abstract, who could argue with a classical liberal arts education?) Political platforms are always election-centered documents, but they typically try to persuade with details. This platform, like Trump’s political campaigns in general, is unashamedly void of such details.
That is unmistakably the Republican platform, and it means that the Republican Party is unmistakably the party of Trump.
