Word: platform
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Democratic National Chairman Paul Kirk had created the opening. Kirk decided that a crafty way to debunk the charge that Democrats promise everything to everyone was to shrink the normally gargantuan party platform to a brief statement of principles. That seemed logical enough, but the ploy reinforced the claim by George Bush that Michael Dukakis is a "Stealth candidate" who ducks specific positions. So when Republican drafters went to work, they produced a 30,000-word monster, nearly ten times the size of its Democratic counterpart...
...platform bulges with specific assertions and pledges, most of them quite familiar. The G.O.P. is against: any species of tax increase, abortion, furloughs for convicted murderers. It is for: the Strategic Defense Initiative, a reduction in the capital-gains tax, the death penalty...
...party that once fiercely debated ERA and abortion, now routinely approves platforms endorsing the social conservative agenda, without heated platform debate on the convention floor...
Available at the Hyatt press center--a list of over "words you won't find in the Democratic Platform Among them are: God, grazing, and Gramm- Rudman. Also missing: quota, Cuba and church...
Republicans have been stressing that the Democratic platform is short on specifics. Some delegates spot blank buttons, buttons they say bear Dukakis' position on the issues...