In a shift, the RNC will decide its platform behind closed doors

The next Republican Party platform will be written behind closed doors.

In a break from decades-long precedent, reporters and spectators will not be allowed to watch next week’s party platform committee proceedings in Milwaukee. C-SPAN, which has previously broadcast the committee’s work, was never offered access this year, and told that the three-day meeting will be closed to the press.

It’s in contrast with the Democratic Party, which will once again stream its platform negotiations, and allow reporters to cover them, and a source of concern from some RNC members who had hoped to watch or participate in the first revision of the platform since the end of Roe v. Wade.

While an RNC spokesperson said that guest passes will be available, and all RNC members will be able to view the platform committee’s work, emails seen by Semafor show some activists being told that committee meetings “are only open to members of that particular committee,” and not being offered the passes.

That wasn’t the case in prior years. Footage from prior RNC platform meetings show rows of committee members making arguments for amendments and language change in front of a sizable public audience.

“The lack of transparency is unwelcome,” said Oscar Brock, an RNC committeeman from Tennessee. “When people operate behind closed doors, you always have to wonder what the outcome is going to be.”

Questions about this year’s platform have focused largely on potential changes to abortion language. In 2016, the party platform endorsed a bevy of national abortion limits, including “legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.”

Four years later, the party never updated the platform, citing the COVID pandemic and the difficulty of gathering committee members in one place. The full RNC passed a stopgap resolution instead, pledging to “enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.”

That eight-year gap makes the platform process more significant this time, since it’s the first that will incorporate not just the party’s current thinking on abortion, but a wide range of issues where Trump’s presidency, election loss, and subsequent revival, along with other world events, have influenced its stance.

Anti-abortion activists, frustrated by Donald Trump’s promise to leave the issue to the states, have called for strong language to stay in the platform. “Watering down the GOP platform’s stance on life would entail an abandonment of its defense of the human dignity of all people,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of SBA Pro-Life America, in a statement to CNN last month.

When activists asked for access to this year’s meeting, some learned that there would be no access. The decision to keep spectators and media out of the room, at Milwaukee’s Baird Center, was reported last week by the New York Times.

“I was on the committee in 1992, and Phyllis Schlafly was there on behalf of Eagle Forum,” Iowa RNC committeeman Steve Scheffler recalled in an interview. “They couldn’t participate, but they could advocate for their position during breaks. It’s a little bit concerning, why that won’t be allowed.”

Party platforms are interesting for historians, activists, reporters, and typically no one else. If a campaign is being asked about them, it’s usually a problem.

If Gaza ceasefire protesters make themselves heard during the Democrats’ platform meetings, we’ll all see it, as we saw the Sanders/Clinton factions fight over details in 2016. If anti-abortion activists want to tell the RNC to keep its “personhood” language, we won’t — and they might not be able to, anyway.

The Trump-era RNC has taken numerous steps, for years, to keep internal party business out of the news. The press has very limited access to regularly-scheduled party meetings, though reporters show up and work sources anyway. The decision to pull curtains around the platform won’t stop coverage of what’s in it, but it will prevent the real-time drama of prior years.

That’s intentional. In a memo distributed on the day of the Trump-Biden CNN debate, Trump campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles urged the RNC to write a “streamlined platform,” not “an unnecessarily verbose treatise” that could be picked apart by pundits.

“For decades, Republicans have published textbook-long platforms that are scrutinized and intentionally misrepresented by our political opponents,” LaCivita and Wiles wrote. “The mainstream media uses their bully pulpit to perpetuate lies and misrepresentations, and the voters are often left believing we stand for something different than we actually do.”

They did not cite examples in the memo, but in 2016, the committee’s tweak to language about defending Ukraine generated bad headlines; well into 2018, it was inspiring questions from a special counsel. In 2020, the decision to punt on the platform inspired some embarrassing coverage, but not too much.

The takeaway, however, was that platforms could be unnecessary distractions — and that the media’s desire for details about a second Trump term should be fed rarely and cautiously. After a string of high-profile New York Times stories looked at Project 2025, a conservative effort to write an agenda for the next administration and to help staff it, Wiles and LaCivita said that “none of these groups or individuals speak for President Trump or his campaign.”

That was before the debate, and a news cycle that drowned out all other coverage of Trump and Biden. Democrats will continue to accuse Republicans of risking abortion access and considering a national ban, whatever Trump or the platform says. The activists protesting changes to the platform won’t have a live TV audience. But the iron law of meetings is that anything happening behind closed doors is more interesting, and news-worthy, than anything happening in front of them.

They’re bringing the platform committee together on July 16, and asking for citizen input on a new DNC portal ahead of time,

“We’ll be able to hear from more Americans and receive more input than ever before as we chart the road to the 2024 Democratic National Convention,” DNC chairman Jaime Harrison said in a statement. “We’ll build a platform that is rooted in the collective experience of Americans and mobilize people to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in November.”

• In National Review, Tim Chapman writes that the platform must “be fought for and defended every four years at the Republican convention,” and that the social conservative wins in 2016 — including language condemning abortion and same-sex marriage — should be protected.