Platform Fight Ahead for GOP?

clipped from www.mcclatchydc.com North Carolina's Sen. Richard Burr is playing a central role in defining what today's Republican Party stands for. That could prove to be a more important challenge than usual for the co-chair of the GOP's convention platform committee. The party's most devoted conservatives and their more moderate leader, John McCain, are at odds on some key issues, including immigration, global warming, stem cell research and a constitutional ban on gay marriage. Mary Summa of Charlotte said she'll fight any platform that is merely "rubberstamp" of McCain's presidential platform. Summa, a former aide to the late Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., believes the platform must reflect hard lines on immigration, gay marriage and embryonic stem cell research. "If the platform supports embryonic stem cell research, I'll do everything I can to get it out," Summa said of the controversial medical initiative that McCain and Burr have supported. (McCain said last month that he's open to re-examining his position.)

Jesse Helms may be dead, but his lousy politics live on.

There's nothing that Democrats would like better than a big fight over how crazy the GOP platform is going to be. Let the nuts shriek, If the GOP's screwed now, this would hammer a nail in their coffin.