AUGUSTA, Maine Top party officials are promising unity at the Maine Republican State Convention this Friday and Saturday in Bangor. If the predictions are right, the event will be a much smoother gathering than the two prior conventions, which saw factionalism split the party along ideological lines.
The push for party cohesion is evident in the conventions theme: United for freedom, united for jobs, united for Maine. Its an attempt to bring all flavors of Republicans back under one big tent after two consecutive conventions in which tea party activists and supporters of libertarian icon Ron Paul bucked party leaders and pushed through their own agenda.
The Republican Party is not the vehicle for one point of view on a narrow set of issues, or one candidate or one cause, said state party Chairman Rick Bennett on Wednesday. Its a big tent and I believe that.
The theme is also clear in the proposed Maine Republican platform.
Party platforms, in which partisans lay out their values and goals, used to be relatively obscure documents in Maine. For decades, platforms were the purview only of hard-core party insiders.
Then, in 2010, a minor firestorm was created when tea party activists muscled through their own platform, edging out a more traditional offering by party officers. The new document took the agenda firmly out of Maine, focusing mostly on national policy issues. It called for the abolition of the U.S. Department of Education, for example, and called on the U.S. to withdraw from all treaties with the United Nations.
It also called for term limits, an elimination of political correctness, and a provision urging the U.S. military to fight to win the War on Terror. It declared health care a right, not a service, and name-dropped Ron Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas and the darling of the tea party.
Some critics within the party faulted the platform for catering to only one faction within Maines Republican community.
The platform was adopted again in 2012, when Paul supporters backing his presidential bid hijacked the convention from party officers and again rejected a more broad, inclusive proposal by party leaders. Democrats used the document to their campaign advantage, telling their supporters that the GOP had been taken over by extremists.
This year, the party is proposing a platform meant to focus on areas where all Republicans agree. Gone are references to Austrian economics and in their place are broad references to constitutional fidelity, limited government and other GOP hallmarks that appeal to all members of the party.
More:
After tea party uprisings in 2010 and 2012, Maine Republicans expect unity at Bangor convention