Repubublican National Convention

For almost two months on the Next Right, we've dicussed -- often debated -- a new Republican party platform.  Now via a new website, the Republican National Committee is giving us the chance to weigh in to the platform that will be adopted at the 2008 GOP Convention in September.

Barack Obama's campaign has waged a similar effort, asking for input into the platform on the community blogs on his website.  Yet, the RNC's site is a more blatant, direct call for platform ideas via text and video submissions.

Kudos to our eCampaign friends at the RNC for getting this effort through the traps and launching it in reasonable advance of the convention.  Let's give them the benefit of confidence and assume that the collective suggestions on the site will make their way into the real platform. Who knows? The platform committee may find some of these ideas valuable.

I'll admit that the introduction videos are a bit too contrived for my taste and the signup process smells of a heavy-handed vetting process for submissions.  However, this effort has the potential to be much more than a gimmick; it's entirely sensical to limit Republican Party platform suggestions to Republicans (and those who vote that way). 

I plan to pull what I believe are the best articulated platform ideas from this site and others and submit them.  I'd encourage you to do the same.   

UPDATE: The RNC hasn't rolled this out in a big way yet. 

For this to be a serious, valuable effort, and to maximize the number of subissions, all cylinders of the RNC and Convention staff should promote it -- in TV, radio and blog interviews, to state party leaders, to grassroots and volunteers.  They'll know it's successful when considerable numbers of community and peer groups take this seriously and make an effort to collaborate on their submissions.