As the February primary approaches, one wonders whether candidates who decide to identify with a party research its platform and claims made by its current champions.

For instance, GOP apologist Rush Limbaugh praised U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as “a man who escaped the bonds of poverty” without using methods contributing to “the dependency cycle” such as Affirmative Action, but Thomas – admitted to Yale Law School under an Affirmative Action plan – conceded “but for them, God only know where I’d be today. These laws and their proper application are all that stands between the first 17 years of my life and the second 17 years.”

There are certainly good, decent people running as Republicans – Peoria-area candidates Mary Ardapple, Verne Dentino and Vince Wieland come to mind, plus incumbent State Rep. David Leitch and long-time public servants such as State Sen. Kirk Dillard and former Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka – but one wonders whether they’ve paid attention to Republican Congressmen Aaron Schock and Mark Kirk and how they’re deferred to the most extreme elements of the GOP, much less the 2008 Republican platform.

A party’s platform, of course, is a list of ideas a party supports to appeal to its core constituency and the public at large in order to get votes. While mostly general and rather innocuous, the 2008 Republican Platform has many points that are less imaginative in policies than combative in politics. Besides advocating drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, opposing expanding the Clear Air Act and spreading the myth of “clean coal,” the GOP continues to embrace “free trade” and calls for restrictive amendments on human life and marriage. Republicans criticize unions, lawyers and the government the party wants to run, falsely claim the proposed Employee Free Choice Act ends worker voting, and continue to back Social Security “reforms” putting private investment in Wall Street into the mix.

With no apparent irony intended, the platform from the party that’s controlled all three branches of the federal government for much of the past decade says, “With so many redundant, inefficient, and ineffective federal programs, it is no wonder that the American people have so little confidence in Washington.”

Further, while criticizing that “short-term politics overshadow the long-term interests of the nation,” bemoaning that Americans with pre-existing conditions can’t get health insurance, and suggesting that Medicare “can be a leader for the rest of our health care system,” Republicans have obstructed efforts to improve health care.

(Oh, yes, and they “reject preferences, quotas, and set-asides” like the one that benefited Justice Thomas.)

What’s gained by affiliating with such a party? Money? Ads? Staff? Why not run as an independent, a neutral party name like the People’s Party or Patriots Party, or even as a Green?

The Republican Party today bears little resemblance to its own roots, vividly recalled this month, when two great Republican leaders with ties to the Peoria area made real contributions to the nation. Theodore Roosevelt (who called Grandview Drive “the World’s Most Beautiful Drive [WMBD]) on Feb. 14, 1903, created the Department of Commerce and Labor. Abraham Lincoln (who spoke here often as an attorney and politician) on Feb. 1, 1865, approved the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery.

Would they be Republicans today?

After all, Theodore Roosevelt comments included:

“We demand that Big Business give the people a square deal. This country has nothing to fear from the crooked man who fails; we put him in jail. It is the crooked man who succeeds who is a threat to this country.”

“This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in. The object of government is the welfare of the people.”

“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.”

“I think there can be no question that women should have equal rights with men.”

“There can be no greater issue than that of conservation in this country. The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others.”

“There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful.”

Hmm. Sounds like a guy interested in social justice and suspicious of Big Business, a feminist and environmentalist who appreciates a free press.

Honest Abe?

He said, “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

He also backed labor, remarking, “I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails under which laborers can strike when they want to. Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. If a man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar!”

Finally, a GOP “trump card,” a 1981 comment from conservative Republican icon Barry Goldwater: “The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in ‘A,’ ‘B,’ ‘C,’ and ‘D.’ Just who do they think they are? I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of ‘conservatism.’”

Let’s hope Leitch, Ardapple, Dentino and the rest are what Limbaugh dismisses as “RINOs” – Republicans in name only – are someday restore the progressive soul of the Grand Old Party.

Here are a few links to parties’ platforms:

http://platform.gop.com/2008Platform.pdf

http://www.democrats.org/page/-/pdf/dem-platform.pdf

http://www.gp.org/platform/2004/2004platform.pdf

Bill Knight is an award-winning Peoria journalist who teaches at Western Illinois University. Contact him at bill.knight@hotmail.com.