The GOP platform is more hardline than ever, and while it's a lot of posturing, at least some of it may prove significant
Humans used to have tails, but all that's left is a vestigial coccyx. American political conventions used to choose presidential candidates, but now they are televised coronations.
The vestigial tail of the American political convention is the compilation and approval of the party's platform, a long document listing a rag-bag of policies that excite the party activists and is swiftly forgotten.
Since platforms are not binding on party candidates, they are merely symbolic. They do however offer a window into a party's soul, a combination of wishlist, base stroking and vote-grabbing.
For the Republican party, the 2012 platform debate isn't so much a vestigial tail as an appendix – not notes at the end of a book but a vermiform appendix, a dead-end tube. Like party platforms, the appendix's role is a mystery to most people: it may be a useful harbour for bacteria but can also rupture, causing pain and misery.
For the Republicans compiling the party's 2012 platform, all was going well until the eruption caused by Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin's remarks about "legitimate rape" magically avoiding the need for abortions. That put the spotlight on the party's platform on abortion, which boldly commits the party to backing a constitutional amendment granting full rights to an unborn child, outlawing abortion in all circumstances.
The Romney campaign's position is more mild. Mitt Romney favours banning abortion other than a few exceptions, such as threatening the mother's health and for pregnancies resulting from rape.
But that is nothing new, despite denunciations of the Republican platform being the most right-wing in the party's history. Go back to the 2004 platform for the convention that renominated George Bush, and you'll find almost identical language:
[T]he unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and we endorse legislation to make it clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children. Our purpose is to have legislative and judicial protection of that right against those who perform abortions.
Compare that to the language being proposed for the Tampa convention next week:
[W]e assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children.
The difference this year is that the timing and profile of Akin's remarks drew attention to the implications of the platform clause. It moved senator Scott Brown, facing a tough battle in moderate Massachusetts, to complain to the RNC chairman: "I believe this is a mistake because it fails to recognise the views of pro-choice Republicans like myself."
The platform's language also includes a "salute" – tacit support and recognition – to states that impose additional restrictions on abortion, as well as backing the appointment of judges opposed to abortion.
But there are several other provisions of the latest Republican platform being drafted that go beyond previous efforts.
On immigration, despite a nod at a guest-worker programme, the GOP's stance is harsher than ever. Led by Kansas hardliner Kris Kobach, the platform is stuffed full of immigration fantasy: the construction of a giant wall along the US border with Mexico, mandatory use of electronic verification by private employers, no support for a path to citizenship, the blocking of funds to universities offering in-state tuition fees to the undocumented, and an end to federal lawsuits against controversial anti-immigrant legislation such as Arizona's SB1070 – a law in fact drafted by Kobach.
And in a reminder of Mitt Romney's most bizarre immigration proposal during the primary season, the platform also backs "self-deportation" as a policy goal.
The platform's role as a safe place to store bacteria can be seen in its likely adoption of a call to have annual audits of the Federal Reserve and the establishment of a "gold commission," both sops to the Ron Paul "goldbug" faction within the party who harbour great hostility towards the Fed and dream of a return by the US dollar to the gold standard abandoned by Richard Nixon in 1972.
On gay rights, there's a coded critique of the Obama administration's end of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy barring homosexuals from serving openly in the US military, calling for an end to "the use of military as a platform for social experimentation". Traditional GOP demands for support for the Defense of Marriage Act are included as well.
At the end of all the posturing there was at least one policy detail that may be significant. That was the dropping of language supporting the tax deduction for home mortgage interest. The move was supported by the Romney campaign – which is keeping a close eye on the platform for danger signs – and so suggests that Romney himself may back abolishing the tax break.