Preface. There are two articles below: the New York Times editorial on the 2016 Republican platform (they call Republicans Extremists too), followed by the 50 platform policies.

Basically, the GOP 2016 platform would make Christianity the official American religion, replace sex education with abstinence-only advice, privatize almost all areas of federal services, cut taxes and regulations for the rich and titans of industry, and impose a belligerent foreign policy and military build-up.

This is an EXTREME platform. The GOP 2016 policies would cut taxes of the rich (done), redistribute wealth from the middle class and poor to the already wealthy (done), repeal environmental laws (ongoing), remove gun controls (ongoing), shrink health care for tens of millions and all women (ongoing), and eventually privatize government services.

If the evangelists keep gaining more control over the Republican, one of their many goals is to abolish the first amendment and make Christianity the official American religion. This would require many things, such as Bible study in schools.  Goodbye democracy, hello fascist theocratic authoritarian plutocracy!

I’ve cut out some of the detailed description containing the exact language in the platform and organized the 50 platform proposals into categories.

Alice Friedemann   www.energyskeptic.com  author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer and “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Podcasts: Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, KunstlerCast 253, KunstlerCast278, Peak Prosperity , XX2 report ]

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Editorial Board. July 18, 2016. The Most Extreme Republican Platform in Memory. New York Times.

For all the disruption and damage that Donald Trump has meant for Republicans, the party’s statement of its views in its newly written convention platform rivals him for shock value.

It is as though, rather than trying to reconcile Mr. Trump’s heretical views with conservative orthodoxy, the writers of the platform simply opted to go with the most extreme version of every position. Tailored to Mr. Trump’s impulsive bluster, this document lays bare just how much the G.O.P. is driven by a regressive, extremist inner core.

Mr. Trump’s anti-Muslim phobia and fantasy wall across the Mexican border are front and center, along with his protectionist views, which deny long-held positions of the party. No less alarming is a raft of planks that ideologues pushed through to banish any notion of moderation and present-day reality from the party’s credo.

This majority has triumphed in securing retrograde positions that include making no exceptions for rape or women’s health in cases of abortion; requiring the Bible to be taught in public high schools; selling coal as a “clean” energy source; demanding a return of federal lands to the states; insisting that legislators use religion as a guide in lawmaking; appointing “family values” judges; and rejecting the need for stronger gun controls — despite the mass shootings afflicting the nation every week.

The platform also makes homophobia and the denial of basic civil rights to gays, lesbians and transgender people a centerpiece, repudiates same-sex marriage, and more.

Rosenfeld, S. July 18, 2016. 50 Shockingly Extreme Right-Wing Proposals in the 2016 Republican Party Platform. What Trump, a GOP Congress and GOP-appointed Supreme Court would do to America. AlterNet.

Loosen gun controls nationwide.

Repeal environmental laws.

Redistribute the wealth to corporations and the rich at the expense of the middle class and poor

• Tax cuts for the rich.
• Deregulate the banks (by getting rid of Dodd-Frank and so on).
• Stop consumer protection: Abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was “deliberately designed to be a rogue agency”, answering to neither Congress nor the executive.
• Add work requirements to welfare and cut food stamps.
• Loosen campaign finance loopholes and restrictions on dark money: “Freedom of speech includes the right to devote resources to whatever cause or candidate one supports. We oppose any restrictions or conditions that would discourage citizens from participating in the public square or limit their ability to promote their ideas, such as requiring private organizations to publicly disclose their donors to the government.”
• Dramatically increase Pentagon budget
• No change in federal minimum wage: set it at the state and local levels.
• Cut government salaries and benefits
• No increasing Social Security benefits by taxing the rich

Health Care & Privatization [ which also diverts money to the rich and impoverishes everyone else ]

• Privatize Medicare, the health plan for seniors [ i.e. get rid of it ]
• Turn Medicaid, the poor’s health plan, over to states.
• Repeal Obamacare
  
• Privatize federal railway service (get rid of Amtrak).
• Privatize government services
• Replace traditional public schools with privatized options 
• Privatize student loans instead of lowering interest rates.

Abolish the first amendment

• Make Christianity a national religion. [ in other words, replace democracy with theocracy.  Despite the constitution prohibiting this: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”.  The intentions of the Founders are clear elsewhere, see this Atlantic article here. ]
• Require bible study in public schools.

Women’s rights and health care

• Pass an anti-choice constitutional amendment: “We assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the 14th Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.”
• Appoint anti-choice Supreme Court justices.
• End federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
• Allow states to shut down abortion Clinics.

Energy & Climate Change

• Open America’s shores to more oil and gas drilling.
• Build the Keystone XL Pipeline.
• Expand fracking.
• Rather than bury nuclear waste, the Republican party proposes development of advanced reprocessing technologies. Mention of Yucca Mountain is conspicuously absent. [ I strongly agree with this. See this post here for why burying waste in Yucca Mountain and new facilities is the right thing to do ]
• No tax on carbon products.
• Ignore global climate change agreements: “The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a political mechanism, not an unbiased scientific institution. Its unreliability is reflected in its intolerance toward scientists and others who dissent from its orthodoxy.”

Immigration & Voting

• Make English the official U.S. language.
• No amnesty for undocumented immigrants.
• Build a border wall to keep immigrants out.
• Require government verification of citizenship of all workers.
• Penalize cities that give sanctuary to migrants.
• Require citizenship documents to register to vote: “We support legislation to require proof of citizenship when registering to vote and secure photo ID when voting. We strongly oppose litigation against states exercising their sovereign authority to enact such laws.”
• Ignore undocumented immigrants when drawing congressional districts.
• Oppose efforts to end the electoral college: “We oppose the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact and any other scheme to abolish or distort the procedures of the Electoral College.”

Sex

• Replace sex education with abstinence-only approaches [ if you do a search on abstinence-only nearly all the results are from peer-reviewed journals showing this approach has been proven over and over not to work ]
• Appoint anti-LGBT and anti-Obamacare justices.
• Legalize anti-LGBT discrimination. 
• Support traditional marriage but no other families
• Oppose stem cell scientific research

Oppose executive branch policy making: “We condemn the current Administration’s unconstitutional expansion into areas beyond those specifically enumerated, including bullying of state and local governments in matters ranging from voter identification (ID) laws to immigration, from healthcare programs to land use decisions, and from forced education curricula to school restroom policies.”

Other platform policies

• No labeling of GMO ingredients in food products.
• Puerto Rico should be a state but not Washington DC
• Restore the death penalty
• Cancel Iran nuclear treaty and expand nuclear arsenal
• Reaffirm support for Israel 
  
• Give internet service providers monopoly control
• Shrink unions and union labor.