ALEC

Patrick and Matt, who I both respect and count as friends, get something completely wrong. Patrick wants to install an "Ideas Czar" and a "Republican National Policy Committee":

What we need is a policy arm independent of the existing policy infrastructure on the Hill that incorporates the best of what's happening in the states, on the Hill, and in the think tanks. A Republican National Policy Committee would be tasked with crafting a larger message that's bigger than just House Republicans or Senate Republicans, but that includes both and Governors as well. An RNPC would have de-facto last word on the elusive question of what the Republican Party is for, would appoint "shadow cabinet" spokespeople to directly respond to what's happening at the departments and agencies, and have point on crafting a Contract-like Republican platform for the midterm elections. Part think tank, part messaging engine, a Republican policy committee would keep the ideas flame alive until a Presidential nominee emerged.

I think that this gets exactly wrong what we need. Washington is where ideas come to die. They get strangled by interests groups warping them for their own ends. They get strangled by bureaucracies in the parties, in the interest groups, and in government interested in the status quo.

We don't need Washington to deputize someone with the authority to have ideas on behalf of the party. Anyone who has seen the platform process up close knows that it is, for the most part, a list of shibboleths rather than a serious policy debate. Subordinating our ideas to existing power structures is just going to destroy us.

We need more people with actual ideas speaking and competing in the marketplace. If we are going to take ideas seriously -- and I agree with Jon that our institutions are not yet ready to, there might be an alternative model that we could borrow from the European centre-right, the European Ideas Network (EIN) or improve on our existing models.