Not much of a change, there, really, though.
Would a wall made of brick, stone, concrete, or whatever actually be different in effect, in cost, in anything but symbolism?
There was a Berlin Wall, and Hadrian built a wall, and it's the Great Wall of China, not the Great Fence.
The Republican Party platform usually calls for stronger control of borders and illegal immigration.
But in past platforms, the GOP simply asked for a fence — an idea Congress approved in 2006, but never funded.
“The double-layered fencing on the border that was enacted by Congress in 2006, but never completed, must finally be built,” the 2012 platform said.
. . . .
The platform draft generally shows the GOP going farther right at it prepares to nominate its hater-in-chief.
Other amendments call for banning military women from combat, teaching Bible in public schools, overturning the Supreme Court’s legalization of gay marriage and combating porn as a “public health crisis.”
As reported in The New York Times, the sociocons and the Christian right had it pretty much all their own way.
Emerging Republican Platform Goes Far to the Right
Republicans moved on Tuesday toward adopting a staunchly conservative platform that takes a strict, traditionalist view of the family and child rearing, bars military women from combat, describes coal as a “clean” energy source and declares pornography a “public health crisis.”
It is a platform that at times seems to channel the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump — calling to “destroy ISIS,” belittling President Obama as weak and accusing his administration of inviting attacks from adversaries.
But the document positions itself far to the right of Mr. Trump’s beliefs in other places — and amounts to a rightward lurch even from the party’s hard-line platform in 2012 — especially as it addresses gay men, lesbians and transgender people.
. . . .
An amendment to specifically recognize that gay people are targets of the Islamic State caused a stir among more conservative delegates who said they felt there was no need to single out any one group.
As the delegate who offered the amendment, Giovanni Cicione of Rhode Island, argued his case — by saying he believed it was an “innocuous and important” way to tell gay people the Republican Party does not exclude them — another delegate moved to shut off the debate.
. . . .
The amendment was defeated, as were others in a similar vein.
But nearly every provision that expressed disapproval of homosexuality, same-sex marriage or transgender rights passed.
The platform calls for overturning the Supreme Court marriage decision with a constitutional amendment and makes references to appointing judges “who respect traditional family values.”
. . . .
Mr. Trump’s influence was also evident in the absence of any mention of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that was promoted in the last Republican platform.
Another tweak to the platform’s language on immigration will also please Mr. Trump:
Though the initial draft called for building a “physical barrier” along the United States border with Mexico, that passage was amended yesterday to call specifically for a wall.
Yet it was the lack of much interference by Mr. Trump or his aides that seemed to set the tone for the platform’s direction.
That allowed conservative activists like Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, to exert greater influence.
Mr. Perkins’s hand could be seen in dozens of amendments on issues like gun control, religious expression and bathroom use.
“He is going to be the nominee for the party. He has his own ideas,” Mr. Perkins told reporters on Monday.
“But this is a statement of not Donald Trump’s campaign, but of the Republican Party.”
A first draft of the document that will become the GOP platform at this year's Republican convention sticks to Donald Trump's tough talk on trade, but leaves the long-time party position opposing abortion rights relatively unchanged.
And in a major shift, the platform would drop the pursuit of a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between a man and a woman, opting instead to oppose the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage and calling on the matter to be decided by the states.
. . . .
The most substantial changes to the 2012 platform came on trade -- a key issue for Trump where he has sparred with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other reliable conservative business backers.
The new language sounds remarkably like Trump, though it stays away from some of his more inflammatory positions including renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Which means that, compared to what Trump has been touting, there has been a rhetorical change and some tweaks about "better deals," and that's all.
No calls for tariffs, quotas, or outright protection, it seems, though those are what Trump and his campaign have openly demanded.
Trump scores rare GOP platform win on trade
On the whole, the Examiner story just retails lies to the effect that Trump is really a free trader and the GOP platform did not and did not need to make a shift from its traditional free trade stance to frank and outright protectionism.
Wall Street didn't budge, and Trump lost on this one, despite the deceptive headline.
Chamber of Commerce 1, Trump 0.
Not seeing anything in the news about the platform expressly calling for deportation of all illegals, either.
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