It's not just Texas

State GOPs veer to the extremes on policy and democracy

Recently, the Texas Republican Party garnered national headlines for approving a new platform with some pretty radical planks. This is an important story, because party platforms are often a good indicator of what public policy will look like in the next few years, especially in states firmly under that party’s control. But the coverage made it seem like it was just the Texas GOP going out on a limb. Actually, it has quite a bit of company.

The new Texas GOP platform:

called for new laws to require the Bible to be taught in public schools and a constitutional amendment that would require statewide elected leaders to win the popular vote in a majority of Texas counties.

Other proposed planks of the 50-page platform included proclamations that “abortion is not healthcare it is homicide”; that gender-transition treatment for children is “child abuse”; calls to reverse recent name changes to military bases and “publicly honor the southern heroes”; support for declaring gold and silver as legal tender; and demands that the U.S. government disclose “all pertinent information and knowledge” of UFOs.

That’s a lot. But Texas’ GOP is not the only state party that has swung hard right in recent years. There’s been a fascinating shift, for example, in the Colorado Republican Party pretty recently that hasn’t attracted many national headlines, but is nonetheless striking. Below is a screenshot from a recent e-mail by the state party to mark the beginning of Pride Month:

Yes, that’s a state Republican Party essentially adopting the rhetoric of the Westboro Baptist Church. Now, a couple of important things are striking about the Colorado GOP:

• The chairman is Dave Williams, who is not only in charge of the state party but is also a candidate for Colorado’s 5th congressional district, where he is in a tight race for this month’s primary against Jeff Crank, a more traditional pre-Trump style conservative.

• The Colorado GOP recently sent out a message calling upon Colorado parents to remove their children from public schools, baselessly accusing the schools of imposing radical gender lessons on students.

• Chairman Williams has engaged in some unusual party practices recently, including issuing official party endorsements in contested Republican primaries up and down the ballot. (I’m not inherently opposed to party organizations taking such an affirmative stance in party contests, but it’s a significant deviation from how parties generally function across the country.)

• Democrats currently enjoy large majorities in the Colorado statehouse as well as the electorate, and these moves do not appear likely to cut into that.

Okay, back to Texas. Some of what that state party has adopted is legitimately new. I’ve been developing a database of state Republican Party platforms since 2020 (some building on existing work by Daniel Coffey at the University of Akron). I have 33 of them so far.