SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah delegate to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland was able Monday to pitch his plan to replace the party's lengthy platform with a short statement of principles.
"The response was great," the delegate, Sutherland Institute President Boyd Matheson, said after asking members of the convention's platform committee to consider adopting a simpler document.
While no action was taken by the committee on its first day of meetings in Cleveland, Matheson said he is hopeful the list of 17 "declarations" could be adopted as a preamble to the party's platform.
Delegates to the convention where Donald Trump is set to be nominated as the Republican candidate for president are expected to approve a platform at the start of the four-day convention that begins July 18.
"A platform, to have power, must be read," Matheson told the committee. "And not just by those of us here. If we are going to be the party of working families, then we should offer a platform every American can read in a single sitting."
That means returning to the type of Republican Party platform adopted in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was running for president, Matheson said, just 1,200 words compared with more than 30,000 in 2012.
Republicans, Matheson said, are facing "a battle against the myth that we are too divided as a party, and as a nation, to confront and conquer the challenging issues of our day."
Focusing on the GOP's shared values, he said, can reach voters "straining to hear the certain trumpet of principles in the midst of the chatter and clamor of this uncertain election cycle."
The proposal from Matheson and Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, a conservative liberal arts school in Michigan, includes calls for a smaller federal government, secure borders, protections for the unborn, and religious liberty.
Matheson said he's not expecting the traditional platform to be replaced, at least not this year.
"We have a lot of people invested in the process," he said. But attaching what he's calling a "Platform of Principle" as a preamble makes it "a formal party document, so that would give it a little more heft."
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