"Bob Smith] was almost certainly the last person in Washington to discover that the Republican platform is irrelevant to actual politics. Smith was outraged when he found out. “The Republican platform,” he declared in his party-switching speech to the Senate, “is a meaningless document that has been put out there so that suckers like me and maybe suckers like you out there can read it.” Smith’s speech went on like this for close to an hour. Through all of it, he howled like a man deceived, the lone member of the Senate Sucker Caucus. He even read portions of the platform aloud. It was a mean thing to do—as close to a dirty trick as Smith is probably capable of—but instructive nonetheless. “As a first step in reforming government,” Smith thundered, reciting the painfully hopeful words of some unnamed party scribe, “we support elimination of the Departments of Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Education, and Energy.” Whatever happened to that promise? he demanded. Or to the promise to defund Legal Services? Not to mention public broadcasting, the UN, and the National Endowment for the Arts. And where’s the legislation that would “make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children”? After five and a half years of Republican control of Congress, Smith wanted to know, where is any of it?"