For a while, there was a question as to which party deserved the label of "party of ideas.

seems to me it was Barack Obama that got that piece of balderdash going again a year or so ago by proclaiming reagan and the republicans as having all the ideas - pure crap.

this idea that republicans need to change their ideology because its stale is nonsense. It is who they are, just as Democrats are who they are because of what they believe. Neither has to, or should change their ideology. The fact that a growing majority of Americans are finally starting to understand the vile, vacuous poverty of republican ideology is no reason that republicans should abandon their fetid, psychotic beliefs.

Since reagan, republicans have exerted extraordinary effort successfully hiding their ideology from the average American voter, which enabled them to get unsuspecting, incurious people to vote against their own interests. Now that people have experienced the full disaster of republican ideology in practice, they have a little bit of an idea what it means to be ruled by republicans and they don't like it.

Encouraging republicans to come up with "new ideas" is dog whistle for encouraging them to come up with new ways for them to hide their true intent from voters.

The problem with the "new ideas" strategy is that if they are actually good ideas, Obama will encourage Dems to accept them. The public won't give Republicans credit for coming up with them. They will give Dems credit for being reasonable or "getting things done."

The Republican strategy in the last 14 years has been to redefine the center. After eight years of abject failure in implementing improvements, much of the public has rejected the idea of choosing a side, and simply wants to see measurable success, regardless of abstract philosophies.

"In a frank and private memo sent today to Republican National Committee members, the RNC chairman acknowledges that the GOP has grown too addicted to ideology . . . . " (Greg Sargent - TPM)

I wish the Democratic Party was addicted to ideology. Instead, the Democratic leadership has regularly abandoned their basic principles for the sake of political expediency.

Seemingly indisputable ideals have been cavalierly cast aside -- 4th Amendment protections (FISA Bill, Patriot Act), the idea that no one is above the law (Valarie Plame, politization of the Justice Dept., ignoring subpoenas), basic human rights (Guantanamo, torture), protecting the environment (innumerable Bush Admnin. rule changes and SCOTUS rulings), protecting workers (the "concessions" in the auto bailout proposal, more SCOTIS rulings) and protecting citizens (Katrina, the financial meatdown).

Time and again, the Democratic leadership has dealt with difficult choices by hiding under their desks and soiling themselves at the mere thought of having a right-wing talking point aimed in their direction.

They do have ideas -- bad ideas. What is happening to the country right now is not simply the result of the last 8 years of lying and self-delusion. It is the result of the last 25 years of lying and self-delusion, starting with Reagan.

I think we (liberals) are in danger of getting too excited about "having ideas". Obama won because of the earth-shatteringly poor performance of the incumbent Republican president.

Hilarious that Duncan is issuing this memo while simultaneously putting out "Obama is Blago's BFF!" ads so grotesque that other Republicans are complaining. Yes, you're out of ideas, Dunk, but it's clear that you aren't trying very hard to find any. Enjoy the exile.

For the past eight years nearly every bit of drivel coming out of the mouth of a Republican has included a mention of "conservative principles". It doesn't seem to dawn on them that everything they've accomplished, from starting a vanity war to bankrupting the Treasury, to shredding the Constitution, has been the antithesis of conservatism. Until they start walking the walk they'll be just what they are today: a pack of hypocritical, party-first obstructionists headed for regional party status.

Gee, Mr Duncan, I'd believe you want to update your party more if you'd STOP referring to the "Democrat Party".

These people are so bitter.

Any political party that promotes candidates for public office who once elected wish to destroy our government in order to save us will suffer from an eventual implosion when we push back on such sophistry, and we have pushed back in '06 and a bit more in '08. If the Republicans can't right their party's out of touch label in the next two years, the party just may be over come 2010! -Kevo

"An interesting observer..." Don't you mean "An interested observer?" I'm sure Duncan is something, or other, but still....

So the GOPers are going to think themselves out of the morass they've blundered into? This I gotta see.

The main constructive function of conservatism is to oppose crackpot ideas, such as utopian dreams which turn into totalitarian nightmares. But any really new "ideas" the conservatives have had over the last 50 year have also been crackpot utopian schemes. Other conservative "ideas" have just been retreads of racism, religious bigotry, hero worship etc.

The Republicans have never been the "party of ideas". They claimed that mantel in the 80's by offering a change to the inbreed Democratic party.

Their "ideas" consisted of:

1.) It is OK to hate(It is time to quite pandering to minorities)
2.) The government is bad and takes too much of your money. (Cut taxes and roll back spending on regular people)

They claimed a lot of other ideas, from shrinking government to compassionate conservatism, but these were just window dressing for elections that they never attempted to execute.

A party whose fundamental principle is minimizing the function of government doesn't really have any options for "new ideas"; all they can do is repackage cut taxes/cut spending.

If they people of this country ever decide to open their eyes, they will see that the Republican party is just a front for the ultra wealthy whose goals are to shift the tax load to the middle class, cut spending on the middle class, reduce wages and get richer off of federal money. Not sure how any of these "ideas" are at all attractive to anybody in the lower 99%.

Isn't an in-house think tank just a tad incestuous? The only sound I'm hearing from the gop is the sound of one knee jerking, which doesn't bode well for generating new ideas.

"In a frank and private memo sent today to Republican National Committee members, the RNC chairman acknowledges that the GOP has grown too addicted to ideology, places politics before policy, and is bereft of ideas -- and that it's imperative that the party shift towards a genuine effort to develop concrete policy solutions to people's problems in order to rescue itself."

Is it really necessary that the Republican Party "...rescue itself"? Back in 1860 the Whigs were reborn (practically overnight) as the Republican Party. Why couldn't the current party do some serious soul-searching and come up with the "new idea" of discarding the sterile ideologies they hold, court some of the "Democratics" who're disenchanted with their party and Phoenix-like, experience rebirth in a more usable form?

It is way past time that a new party is born. Not "born again", however. Both parties are outdated and misleading. Perhaps what is needed is an expansion to three political parties, right, center and left. At the same time maybe we could go to proportional representation? But that would require an enlightened, constitutionally aware Congress, wouldn't it? Then again, it well could be time for "Red" Jefferson's idea of a constitutional convention. Get rid of the usufruct and not bind succeeding generations by the tenets of those preceeding?

Steve Benen quotes Greg Sargent: "... the RNC chairman acknowledges that the GOP has grown too addicted to ideology, places politics before policy, and is bereft of ideas ..."

What the RNC chairman won't acknowledge is that the fake, phony, trumped-up, corporate-sponsored, so-called "conservative" pseudo-ideology of the Republican Party is not a set of governing principles, but a line of bullshit with which to bamboozle gullible rubes.

The actual governing principles of the Republican Party today are greed, corruption and blatant criminality.

Indeed, the Republican Party is no longer a political party in the normal sense of the term. It is an organized crime syndicate masquerading as a political party in order to gain control over the power of government, and then use that power to loot the wealth of the nation and the world for the enrichment of its ultra-rich financial backers.

That is the model of governance that the Republican Party represents, as exemplified by the past eight years of the Cheney-Bush administration.

Obviously, running on a platform of "We're Crooks -- Elect Us So We Can Steal From You!" doesn't win a lot of votes. Hence, the line of bullshit known as "conservatism".

Now that a lot of people have wised up to the malicious hoax of Republican "conservatism", the Republicans are trying to come up with another line of bullshit.

It's a fairly easy task to cobble up a set of policies that address the major challenges facing our country, but there is one small problem.

The folks who hold what is left of the power levers of the party still believe that the problem isn't forming new policies, but adhering more than ever to the ones they had....the ones that cost them the last election and will continue to cost them elections in the future.

It could be Olympia Snowe, Lincoln Chafee or even Warren Rudman pulling the policies together.

But it is the Newt Gingriches, Grover Norquists, and evangelical right who have the remaining money and lead the foot troops and the last thing they want to hear is a platform that doesn't focus almost exclusively on abortion, gay rights, no taxes and a heavily military foreign policy.

"addicted to ideology..."

Just say no.

The ReThuglicans, after all, are the party of "No."

No taxes.

No regulation.

No gay marriage.

No abortions.

No accountability.

No ideas.

"... [T]he Republican party is just a front for the ultra wealthy whose goals are to shift the tax load to the middle class, cut spending on the middle class, reduce wages and get richer off of federal money"

Shorter TT, "More money, more money, more money"

GOP stands for "Greedy Old Plutocrats"

"Obviously, running on a platform of "We're Crooks -- Elect Us So We Can Steal From You!" doesn't win a lot of votes. Hence, the line of bullshit known as "conservatism"."

As so often it is true, SecularAnamist nails it.

The Father of the Republican Party, Lincoln, once said that it was imperative for the nation to "disenthrall" itself from the "dogmas of the quiet past," for as "our case is new we must think anew." It will be interesting to see how far Duncan is able to escape the ideologues in his own party with his sensible notion that a party's principles must be flexible, offering guidance and a sense of direction rather than being rigid absolutes that restricts a party's ability to respond to changing, and often unique, events.

My guess is that he will not get very far. Almost every discussion of how the GOP needs to reinvent itself after two disasterous elections begins from the premise that Republicans need to get "back to their roots" -- back to the Reagan trinity of small government, low taxes and individual "liberty," defined as a you're-on-your-own rugged individualism. As a result, Republicans are spectaculary unsuited for times like these when homey and mindless platitudes simply won't work and when creative and unconventional wisdom is needed.

The problem for Duncan is that the GOP is simply not a modern political party with a modern disposition or mindset. It's a regional party anchored in the folkways and mores of the Deep South. It's view of politics is today what it has always been for the South -- get power in order to protect the Southern way of life. It means to dominate, not govern, the nation as a whole, just as the reactionary South always has.

It is, of course, possible to incorporate the old with the new, to support tradition and progress at the same time, to make conservative principles relevant and compatible with the governing of a modern, progressive, and extraordinarily diverse and interconnected world. But finding continuities between the past and the future requires uncommon sensitivity, unique sympathy and a deep and rare understanding for those who are unlike you. It cannot be done by a party like our contemporary GOP whose agenda is controlled by our most parochial region, with its extraordinarily provincial mindset.