Republicans approved their new platform on the first day of the national convention in Milwaukee, giving the seal of approval to a document that differs in significant ways from its predecessors.
The approval by voice vote came early during the first formal session on the afternoon of July 15. The ayes were louder than nays, but nays were not absent.
Pete Hoekstra, former ambassador to the Netherlands and leader of the Michigan Republican Party, moved to advance the platform soon after the rules package for the convention moved forward.
“Every American can read our platform and know what we believe,” said Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), the chair of the platform committee.
The party retained its 2016 platform in 2020, making 2024 the first time the GOP has reworked its platform in eight years.
The Republican National Committee’s platform committee approved the new platform a week before the convention, on July 8. It passed 84 to 18 after a motion, also from Mr. Hoekstra.
Former President Donald Trump was working on revisions to the document the evening before that vote, according to a Trump campaign source who spoke with The Epoch Times.
It’s a fraction of the length of previous platforms, and far less detailed on everything from the Second Amendment to the United States’ foreign allies and partners.
It was the omission of some language on abortion that the GOP has long valued that irked some pro-life Republicans.
But that was all before the assassination attempt on former President Trump.
The platform did not appear to face any minority reports during the rapid process of passage on July 15, part of a flurry of early procedural moves.
Other pro-life Republicans have defended the platform.
“It’s more realistic,” Louisiana state Rep. Michael Bayham, a delegate to the convention, told The Epoch Times at the Fiserv Forum in downtown Milwaukee.
“An obscure document that no one reads is irrelevant,” he said.
The 2024 platform differs from those that have come before it in several other ways.
It endorses rhetoric and signature policies of the 45th president on trade and related issues, including a baseline tariff on goods from abroad.
It also calls for revoking China’s Most Favored Nation status with respect to trade.
One line calls on Republicans to go back to their roots as a party of “Industry, Manufacturing, Infrastructure, and Workers.”
When it comes to organized labor, though the word “union” is not present in the document, it omits language on right-to-work laws.
Sean O'Brien, the head of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, will be among the major guests at the convention.
