Thinking Aloud

Last week RNC Chairman Mike Duncan decided that what the GOP needed to "fix" its problems was a new "think tank".

The Republican National Committee is building a new, in-house think tank aimed at reviving the party's policy heft.

The think tank will be called the Center for Republican Renewal, and it has been mentioned as part of RNC Chairman Mike Duncan's platform for reelection, but was begun shortly after the election as a new RNC office, separate from the campaign, a Republican official said.

Former Texas Congressman Tom DeLay thinks that idea is a horrible idea.

While I appreciate Chairman Duncan for thinking outside the box, we'd be better off paying more attention to what the Democrats have built over the last eight years and working off of a new model. This new political paradigm all comes down to campaign finance reform. What John McCain thought (hoped?) would be a shot in the arm to our campaigns turned out to be a shot in the foot to the Republican Party. Karl Rove and the Bush team were simply convinced that Republicans would rake in the dough when we doubled the individual contribution limits...but what they didn't realize was the incredible amount of soft money that would pour in to finance liberal political capital. Unions, foundations, and wealthy individuals all ponied up vast amounts of their resources to build an outside organization - a Shadow Party, as David Horowitz calls it. Couple that with a national candidate’s (without the last name Bush) unexpected hard dollar fundraising prowess and, well, here we are.

The good news is there are about twice as many conservative think tanks as liberal ones, yet the Republican National Committee - a party organization with the sole goal to elect Republicans to office, is potentially wasting scarce, overly-regulated, hard dollars on ten staffers to write talking points and develop a new website. They don't need a think tank to develop new ideas, we already have a party platform for that.

I do agree with the former Congressman that the idea of another conservative think tank is un-necessary and that the party should focus on electing Republicans. However I would qualify his statement saying that that GOP needs to focus on electing HONORABLE Republicans - people who are not going to get a) a raging case of D.C.itis or b) who do not think that inconveniences like campaign finance laws apply to them! Maybe if the GOP started doing that, the voters would start to trust them again!