After a spirited back-and-forth on what is traditionally a slow day prior to the convention, the committee came up with a compromise the (hopefully) satisfy shorter-platform advocates and supporters of something closer to the status quo.
James Dickey, Travis GOP Chairman (via Facebook comment):
1. It'll take 60% to pass the legislative priorities and principles statements.
2. It'll only take a majority to pass a platform plank item, but
3. Each item will have its vote counts reported.
So planks that gets barely a majority of delegate support will be included, but everyone will know the support level.
- Very transparent.Jeremy Blosser, Tarrant County, SREC member for SD 10 (via Facebook post):
- Inclusive.
- More useful for holding legislators accountable on the most desired items.
- A really good final result with a much stronger support out of committee.
Major points from the Temp Rules Committee today (note all of this goes to the SREC [State Republican Executive Committee] for consideration and approval, and ultimately to the convention, but this is the committee's recommendation as it stands):
- This is the most open set of rules for delegates to testify to the committee we've had at the convention in some time. Not a lot of people are participating and utilizing the opportunity, though.
- Delegates have until 9am Wednesday to submit amendments for the committee's consideration, and until 11am to provide testimony.
- During the floor debate, the convention chair will take up each *major section* of the platform one at a time, and ask for any amendments or changes in that section. This is an alternative to the historic platform-wide free-for-all and will hopefully make the order things come up in a good bit more predictable.
- Legislative priority language was adopted; the platform committee report will include up to 5 legislative priorities for the 85th legislative session.
- Plank by plank voting was forwarded on. A 2/3rd threshold to include items was briefly passed, then reconsidered and returned to a simple majority for platform planks and a 60% majority for the preamble, principles, and legislative priorities. We will report the actual weighted percentage vote for each item in the results. [...]Mark Ramsey, Harris County, SREC member for SD 7 (via email):
[...] First, in the temporary platform committee, there were three separate well-orchestrated attempts to gut the platform in a wholesale fashion. The first [...] moved to limit the entire platform to 100 planks maximum. While the debate was not recorded in the minutes, this would be loosely like limiting the Constitution to the original document without the Bill of Rights or any other amendments! This idea was soundly defeated by the temporary committee.
Second, there was a move to start not with the prior platform as is ALWAYS THE CASE, but rather, to eliminate the 2014 platform and rather, start with ONE of the Senate Districts in Tarrant County's Platform, which only had 14 total planks! Thankfully, this too was defeated.
Third, there was an attempt to gum up the process by REQUIRING each sub-committee to go through a time consuming vote up or down on each 2014 plank, rather than giving the subcommittees their customary leeway in how they conduct their business. This was also defeated.
Fourth, after nearly two wasted hours, the committee voted as they should have from the beginning to use the 2014 platform as a starting point in their deliberations.
However, the assault on the platform was not over. In the Rules committee, there was a motion to require that in order to become part of the platform, a plank would have to garner two-thirds of the full delegate strength vote on Thursday evening! This flies in the face of a representative democracy and fundamentally puts the one-third minority in charge of the outcome! [...]
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