A longtime observer of Texas politics, Paul Burka, wrote that the Republican Party platform that came out of their convention “ignores the legitimate needs of the state.”  I couldn’t agree more.  What we saw was a classic case of inmates running the asylum, and the results are both frightening and harmful.

The official platform includes planks that give many people pause.  Of course there is the obsession with homosexuality, and an insistence that gay men and women should undergo reparative therapy to “cure” themselves of being gay.  Here is where I could cite the written statement of condemnation of EVERY major medical and mental health organization in the United States for the often-harmful practice of reparative therapy, but why bother?  The people who pushed this agenda regularly dismiss scientific evidence and expert opinion.

But if there is one thing that enrages this crowd more than gays it is immigrants.  Of the 200 amendments to the party platform proposed by delegates, 150 of them concerned immigration.  The extremists successfully removed the guest worker proposal approved in 2012 by the more forward-looking and levelheaded Republicans, and inserted hard-line language that calls for utilizing “existing pathways” only after the border is “secure”, which is not defined.  This amounts to status quo.  Not surprisingly, District 94 candidate Tony Tinderholt was squarely in the hard-line camp.  One must ask, if not the conservative Texas Solution, then what?  Spend billions of Texas dollars to seal the border?  Mass incarceration?  It is always easy to oppose things, but difficult to offer real answers to real problems.

Immigration is primarily a federal issue and will require a federal solution.  U.S. Rep Joe Barton is planning to propose a federal bill that will include a guest worker program and a secure border, and will come much closer to addressing the broader issue than the Texas Solution.  I support his efforts, as well as those of the business and evangelical communities that worked with House Republicans to push this effort forward. I would keep in place in-state tuition for kids that have gone through Texas schools because we have invested in them and we should realize the return on those dollars by setting them up for success.

Oh, and I don’t think it is a government’s job to recommend therapy for its citizens, but there I go again… promoting individual liberty.