The Party of Ideas

Mostly dumb ideas, these days, or at any rate ideas that hardly anybody likes. The Republicans are apparently looking to reboot. Steve Benen at Political Animal is on the case:

THE RNC'S THINK TANK.... I've argued a few times since the election that the Republican Party's intellectual bankruptcy compounds its electoral problems. The race to be the "party of ideas" is over; the GOP lost. When one of the top House Republican leaders wrote about the policy vision for the party's future, and listed three failed ideas from the '90s, it only helped reinforce the point this is a party lacking in substance and policy direction.

It appears that the party is at least aware of the problem (and admitting you have a problem is the first step). Ben Smith reports that the Republican National Committee is "building a new, in-house think tank aimed at reviving the party's policy heft

There is a certain topological obstruction to the project, however. Steve zeroes in:

To be fa[i]r, I think the party does have some genuine policy goals in key areas, but they're burdened by the fact that no one actually likes them. The party would love, for example, to privatize public schools and Social Security, but these are awful ideas that voters hate


BTW, I was and continue to be a fan of Kevin Drum, but the new Benen - Hilzoy combo is really great.

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