That’s It Exactly

This is a very shrewd take on what’s unfolded over the last few days in the GOP platform drafting process. In one sense, Donald Trump having a particularly extreme party platform is no surprise. But it’s not quite that. Normally, the nominee and the people around him invest a fair amount of time keeping party activists and interest groups in check, the ones who want to really pile on the red meat and extremism. They hardcore folks want X; the nominee tussles with them and makes them settle for 1/2X. But this time, Trump doesn’t care and no one is there to provide a counterbalance. He may not even know there is a platform. So instead of 1/2X it’s 2x or, shall we say, XXX. It’s allowed the hardest core of the right to produce what’s probably the most extreme GOP platform in history.