(promoted by Soren)
Patrick Ruffini recently wrote a piece arguing that the GOP needs an “ideas czar”, while Soren Dayton disagrees, insisting that, “The beltway is the disease not the cure.” Regardless of where you stand on this argument, both Patrick and Soren raise a critical, underlying point: the Republican Party needs a way to bring new, innovative ideas to the table if it wants to find its identity and ultimately achieve electoral success.
Ruffini founded the site RebuildTheParty.com, which specifically states that the Internet must be our #1 priority over the next four years. I fully agree with this, and in this vein I think we need to utilize the Internet – and specifically, the concept of peer production, which “describes what happens when masses of people … collaborate openly to drive innovation and growth” – to accomplish our goal. Peer production is what creates content for Wikipedia and empowers websites like Digg.
Indeed, in today’s new Age of Participation, having an elite person or group of people making policy decisions and generating new ideas is a recipe for death. Although I have an enormous amount of respect for Patrick, his idea of establishing a GOP ideas czar is tantamount to maintaining the status quo in that our ideas will continue to come from the party’s established elite. An institution consisting of “politicians, academics, business leaders, think tankers, and interest groups” as Soren describes is slightly better, but ultimately it is still an exclusive group of elites.
Instead, we need to establish an open forum in which all ideas from all walks of life are welcome and taken into consideration. Everyone’s opinion is valuable as we fight to rebuild the Republican Party. Patrick has taken the first step toward this with ideas.rebuildtheparty.com, where anyone can make suggestions to enhance the RebuildTheParty.com platform, but unfortunately it’s only a baby step. In the end, the be all and end all of the Republican Party – the Republican National Committee – is not reviewing, considering, and responding to this feedback.
If we really want to create new ideas and transform the Republican Party, we cannot continue to allow a small, elite group to be the source of our ideas and policy. If we continue to do so, we risk digging a hole so deep that we may never be able to climb out. Instead, we must permanently open the Republican Party’s ideas and platforms to mass collaboration. In doing so, we can truly become the party of the people, and in turn we can take a huge step toward becoming the party of the future.