'Gearing up for a fight': Trump's latest move could cause 'skirmishes' among conservatives
Donald Trump has reportedly decided to slice in half the size of the Republican party's platform, a move expected to cause waves of infighting among GOP leaders and special interests.
The New York Times reported Saturday that the ex-president's "top advisers are planning to drastically scale back and simplify the official platform of the Republican Party," citing "a memo sent to the party’s platform committee."
"The memo — signed by Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, the former president’s two lead advisers — described their efforts to pare down the platform 'to ensure our policy commitments to the American people are clear, concise and easily digestible,'" according to the report. "It dismissed past platforms as needlessly 'textbook-long' documents shaped by 'special interest influence' that had left the party and its nominee open to attacks from Democrats."
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The report also noted that the move by Trump's team is likely to cause internal fights.
"The decision to cut the size of the platform sharply — the most recent one adopted by the party, in 2016, ran nearly 60 pages — is likely to prompt skirmishes among some conservatives and party activists who have spent years haggling over the document’s language," the Times reported. "One person close to the process who was granted anonymity to speak about the planning said the new platform could be half the size of the one in 2016."
Specifically, according to the report, anti-abortion groups are readying themselves to take on Trump.
"Anti-abortion activists, in particular, have been gearing up for a fight in case the Trump team seeks to dilute or delete longstanding language in order to make Mr. Trump appear more moderate on the issue," the article states. "In hopes of keeping any disagreements out of the public view, the party is planning to have the platform committee meet behind closed doors in Milwaukee a week before the broader convention. That would be a break from decades of precedent. The party’s platform committee meetings have been televised since at least 1984, according to C-SPAN archives."