In the US, it's apparently normal - and not only on the Republican side, not only now under Trump - that the national party and the presidential campaign / presidency if the president is from said party, become essentially indistinguishable. But then they publish something like this, which, not only does Trump not give a fuck about any of it, not only is it full of pie in the sky fever dream nonsense, but a lot of it is on topics that aren't even in the president's power and would have to be decided by Congress or the states.

It's very confusing for me because in here, parties and party leadership are immensely powerful - since every government is a multi-party coalition, even the prime minister can only survive as long as he's in the good graces of the leadership of all the parties in his government. And those party HQs can indeed set out an agenda or priority list that drives the actions of their elected representatives at all levels, regional, state level, national both legislative and executive. Though on the other hand, given that on all those levels coalitions will be required for a majority, the final governing agreements at each level will not resemble any single party's platform all that much in the end.

But in the US, where in all elections people need to be elected individually first past the post and a national party HQ is just an extension of the president or presidential candidate, what's even the point of them having a platform like this?