Oh, I had this free time to think about something to write about and I was going to write about the question, “why would any Jew vote Republican?” and, then, found myself at the Republican Party’s platform. This is some really wacky stuff.

It starts wacky simply by aligning a whole set of very weird and scary positions under the broad headline of “American Exceptionalism”. I don’t believe in the entire notion of “American Exceptionalism”. But, okay, let’s say you do. Isn’t that a place to offer uplifting messages and vision?

Uh, why would this be there?

“A Twenty-First Century Threat: The Cybersecurity Danger”

The frequency, sophistication, and intensity of cyber-related incidents within the United States have increased steadily over the past decade and will continue to do so until it is made clear that a cyber attack against the United States will not be tolerated.

America is not, hello, exceptional in the threat of cyber attacks.

How about this:

Conventional Forces in Decline

More than a century ago, Republican President Theodore Roosevelt predicted that America’s future was in the Pacific. That future is here today, but it can develop peacefully only under the shield of American Naval and Air power. Yet the current Administration plans to significantly curtail production of our most advanced combat aircraft, decommission 6 of 60 Air Force tactical squadrons, and eliminate critical air mobility assets, including 27 giant C-5As and 65 C-130s, while divesting the nation of the brand new C-27.

The President plans to reduce our naval forces by retiring seven cruisers and slowing work on amphibious ships and attack submarines, further reducing the Navy that already has the smallest fleet since the early years of the twentieth century. And he will reduce ground forces by separating 100,000 soldiers and Marines – many of whom will be discharged after recently returning from combat – and another 100,000 under the sequester.

These plans limit our strategic flexibility in an increasingly dangerous world. The current President is repeating the disastrous cuts of the post-Vietnam war era, putting our nation in danger of returning to the “hollow force” of the Carter Administration, when the U.S. military was not respected in the world.

Putting aside the a-historical, but perhaps a-hole view, of “disastrous” cuts of the post-Vietnam war era– which just fits into the narrative of how wimpy liberals “lost” the war in Vietnam, this is just a very uninspiring point. From the perspective of generating enthusiasm and future-looking ideas, what a dud of a section.

I have to give them credit for one exceptional passage, under the heading of Sovereign American Leadership in International Organizations:

So it is all the more important that the Congress – the Senate through its ratifying power and the House through its appropriating power – shall reject agreements whose long-range impact on the American family is ominous or unclear. These include the U.N. Convention on Women’s Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty as well as the various declarations from the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development.

Yeah, it’s very, very exceptional– if not saying much about leadership– when you refuse to accept conventions accepted by most of the rest of the world.

If you just read through this section, the only picture I conjure up is a group of white men, bitter and angry, fuming at a president they don’t like (and, probably at least one or more thinks REALLY wasn’t born in the U.S.).

It certainly doesn’t feel exceptional.

Which, I guess, is the reason they find themselves about to be shellacked in the election.