The Spokane County Republican Party nailed in the planks for its 2006 political platform last weekend. It retained the call for the United States to leave the United Nations and for U.N. headquarters to be booted from U.S. soil. However, it held off on prohibiting foreign companies from operating U.S. ports for fear of looking “isolationist.”

Yeah, wouldn’t want that.

Plank check. So, what is the point of adopting a platform? As the Spokane County GOP says on its Web site, one of the purposes is to “act as a set of principles for those who represent us.”

But what happens when a candidate falls off the platform? The answer: Help him to his feet and applaud. For instance, U.S. Senate candidate Mike! McGavick is a Republican who adopts a “pro-choice” view on abortion. The platform is “pro-life.” Now it would be folly to expect a candidate to march lockstep with all party principles, but “the sanctity of life” is, in the words of Dick Cheney, big time.

Not to worry. Last weekend, the assembled Republicans were urged not to publicly criticize their candidates.

Carter’s little pills. When Jimmy Carter was president, he had the right prescription for energy costs: conservation. After the oil shocks of the 1970s, Americans traded down to smaller cars, adjusted thermostats and bought more efficient appliances.

Oil prices tumbled. Americans forgot why.

After 20 years of bingeing on mammoth vehicles, Americans still have amnesia but refuse to take responsibility. Rather than push for Carter’s correct but unpopular cure, Democrats are becoming enablers by proposing a two-month suspension of the federal gasoline tax.

Must be some elections up ahead.

Talk is cheap. So is labor. It took courage for President Bush to travel to the throbbing heart of illegal immigration outrage, as he recently did when visiting Orange County, Calif., and telling a crowd that a guest-worker program was an important piece of reform. Then again, that crowd was largely made up of businessmen.

That’s an important consideration when you consider these statistics cited by conservative writer John O’Sullivan of the New York Post:

Under the Clinton administration from 1995-97, there were 10,000 to 18,000 worksite arrests of illegal immigrants. About 1,000 employers were cited. Under Bush in 2004, there were 159 worksite arrests and a grand total of three employers were cited.

Wouldn’t you expect the opposite trend after the 9/11 terrorist attacks?