Published: September 22, 2011
“Safe for now”
Attempt to strike pro-life plank from California GOP platform fails, but battle is not over
A behind-the-scenes effort to remove a longstanding and strong pro-life plank from the California Republican Party’s platform was defeated at the party’s fall convention in Los Angeles last weekend, but the issue is likely to come up again at the GOP’s spring convention in Burlingame.
“The pro-life plank in the Republican platform is safe for now,” says the California ProLife Blog of the California ProLife Council, which has three members on the GOP platform committee. “Some in attendance [at last weekend’s convention] were there in an attempt to remove traditional planks from the party platform, those including the pro-life plank. They were not successful in doing this at the convention. But the fight is not over yet. In the spring the GOP will hold a spring convention in Burlingame where the platform will be up for a vote amongst all the delegates.”
In addition to removal of the pro-life plank, a faction in the party backed by Charles T. Munger Jr., a wealthy Stanford physicist and son of business magnate Charles Munger, a business associate of Warren Buffett, sought other changes in the platform. The Sacramento Bee characterized the younger Munger’s efforts as “a push to adopt a more moderate California Republican Party platform.”
Other platform changes proposed by the “Munger faction” included removing GOP support for the reversal of Roe v. Wade, striking support for restricting marriage to between one man and one woman, as well as eliminating language in the platform in favor of school vouchers and homeschooling, and planks opposing assisted suicide and human cloning.
Ultimately, the full platform committee rejected the recommended changes by the party’s platform drafting committee by a vote of 65-50.
If the changes had been approved, the California Republican Party platform would no longer have included the following language:
The California Republican Party is the party that protects innocent life because we believe life begins at conception and ends at natural death. We support laws that protect unborn children from partial birth abortions, sex selection abortions, tax-payer funded abortions, abortions performed as a form of birth control, or abortions on minor girls without their parent’s notification and consent.
We believe that the question of abortion is a matter that should be left to the people through their elected representatives, not usurped by the United States Supreme Court, and believe that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be reversed.
We support adoption as an alternative to abortion and call on lawmakers to reduce the bureaucratic burden placed on adoptive couples.
As a part of respecting the sanctity of life for disabled persons, we oppose efforts to legalize assisted suicide or euthanasia.
We support a comprehensive ban on all human cloning.
The California Republican Party supports ethical stem cell research that focuses on cures, not destroying innocent human Life.
Instead, the Munger-backed platform would have substituted all of the above with: “We believe in the sanctity of human life.”
The internal battle within the California Republican Party is nothing new. So-called “moderates” like former governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Pete Wilson have long tried to move the party toward the center of the political spectrum in the interest of electing more Republicans to statewide office.
Mike Spence, former president of the California Republican Assembly, a group described by Ronald Reagan as “the conscience of the Republican Party,” told the Bee, "The platform committee reversed the horrendous decisions of the drafting committee and restored core principles of the party platform."
