A couple of the oddest parts in the WaPo item aren’t so strange. The plank to protect the Electoral college goes back to some politicians (on both sides of the aisle) looking to abolish the EC and using direct election by popular vote.

That would have had the effect of giving Gore the win in 2000 over Bush. But it wouldn’t have overturned the results of other elections going back to Harrison and Hayes. Full breakdown here.

The DC was not meant to be a state as it was carved out from VA and MD. That was the Founding intention, so there’s a legitimate historical reason to not grant it statehood. Should that change now? Should they have a vote and say in national politics - with 2 Senators and a member of the House? The GOP would never want to shift the balance of power when those Congressmen would likely be Democrats - giving Democrats a better chance of controlling the Senate. Odd that they’d give Puerto Rico statehood though, for similar reasons since Puerto Rico would like vote Democratic and bring 2 Senators and 5 Reps.

The Gold standard is straight from the Ron Paul/Glenn Beck insanity wing.

Interesting that the first part of the energy policy goes to coal, which is a sop to the coal producing states that are seeing losses due to fracking and natural gas prices being low at present.

Then there’s a bit of cognitive dissonance on environmental policy:

The environment is getting cleaner and health-ier. The nation’s air and waterways, as a whole, aremuch healthier than they were just a few decades ago. Efforts to reduce pollution, encourage re-cycling, educate the public, and avoid ecological degradation have been a success. To ensure their continued support by the American people, however, we need a dramatic change in theattitude of officials in Washington, a shift from a job-killing punitive mentality to a spirit of cooperation with producers, landowners, and the public. An important factor is full trans-parency in development of the data and modeling that drive regulations. Legislation to restore the authority of States in environmental protection is essential. We encourage the use of agricultural best management practices among the States to reduce pollution

On the one hand, they’re touting the benefits of environmental regulation, but then they call for gutting it - particularly by giving regulatory authority to states that have shown an unwillingness to do what needs to be done to clean up problems in their states.