Proposed Republican Policy List for RNC Supported Candidates

It has been proposed that any candidate to be supported for election in 2010 by the Republican National Committee must support at least 8 of the following 10 policies:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;
(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run health care;
(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;
(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;
(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;
(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and
(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.

 I am going to comment on those of these that I disagree with or have some reservations about.  Here goes:

5)  I do support legal immigration and I wish to make it much easier for those who wish to immigrate with larger quotas and lower fees.  I do believe that immigrants should be encouraged to learn English and citizens should be required to know English.  I favor guest worker status which is relatively easy to obtain, so large numbers of those who are now illegal will have future options which are legal.  Those who are now illegal, but have otherwise not been convicted of any crime, who can obtain the recommendations of past employers, who are willing to pay a reasonable fee to alter their status to a legal guest worker status, and who then work 5 years as a guest worker with a continued clean record and further employer recommendations, should be able to obtain legal resident status.  These terms are simply approximations to what I think is a reasonable policy which will benefit the United States and I am open to further discussions on this complex issue.  My views may not be considered consistent with the intent of the resolution enforcers, however.

8)  I flat out reject the Defense of Marriage Act as an infringement of the right of individuals to live in accordance with their own chosen values and their own conscience.  I reject it also because marriage is a spiritual state of union between people and government has no proper role in such a spiritual matter.  Spiritual matters are the realm of individuals, who may chose to make their spiritual values those of a religion or give them a different basis.  What government does have a legitimate role in is domestic partnerships or civil unions by means of enforcing a contract between the parties.  These contracts should no more limit the persons by number or gender than do small business partnerships.  The legal contracts should have multiple standard terms for the care and responsibility for children, for the sharing of property, and for the sharing of medical expenses and decision-making.  The sexual orientation of the partners should be of no concern to the government.  Those of a religious conviction are free to be guided by their convictions in their domestic partnership and are free to have it blessed as a marriage by their religious authorities, but such status will have no legal bearing at all.  Government for its part will refrain from attempting to make any definition of marriage and will leave that to the religions and to the sovereign People.

9)  If the denial of health care is done by government edict, I agree with this statement.  However, I do not agree with it in the context that medical providers are to be forced to provide medical care, if that is the intent of this ambiguously worded statement.  While I support a woman's right to an abortion if she chooses one, it is also clear that taxpayers, many of whom disagree with this, have the right not to play a role in paying for abortions.  They have the right to their convictions and any attempt to make them complicit in an abortion is morally wrong.  Furthermore, partial birth abortions are too marginal to birth to be allowed by law.  They should clearly be illegal.  Once a child is no longer a part of a woman's body, it has the rights of any individual not to be murdered.  I am therefore in agreement with this statement with respect to abortions.

These 10 required positions are simply a proposal at this point.  It will be interesting to watch what happens to this proposal and whether any of my concerns will be addressed.