The Texas GOP Takes a Hard Right Turn

Coming off a stronger-than-expected 2020 performance and buoyed by a favorable national environment, Texas Republicans met at their convention earlier this month in high spirits and conducted the standard business of adopting a new policy platform.

While some of the platform’s newly adopted planks—on gas prices and parental rights, for example—are closer to standard-fare conservative talking points, much of the platform strays far outside the political mainstream. 

Additions to the 2022 platform include a plank demanding the repeal of the 16th Amendment, which allows the federal government to levy personal income tax; a plank encouraging the abolition of the Federal Reserve; a plank declaring social transitioning for transgender individuals, which requires no medical intervention, “physically and psychologically abusive;” a plank calling for a referendum on Texas seceding from the Union; a plank declaring that “Homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice;” and planks trafficking in fears over “The Great Reset,” a nebulous conspiracy theory inspired by the 2020 World Economic Forum conference of the same name that holds that a socialist world government is using climate policy to seize power.

Another conspiracy theory appears in a resolution tacked on to the end of the platform: that of massive fraud in the 2020 election. The document falsely identifies President Joe Biden as an illegitimate “acting” president whose victory was thanks to massive voter fraud in swing states.