34: Ideas & Debate
Foster ideas and healthy debate. Other Information:
Groupthink Is a Loser -- Peggy Noonan recently wrote about how our Party has stifled debate and how groupthink has taken over.
She quoted Joe Scarborough saying, "Everybody's afraid to talk." She then related that in 1994 the Republican Party "was alive
with ideas: John Kasich on the budget, Jack Kemp on taxes, John Engler on welfare reform, Tommy Thompson on crime control.
This was the bubble and fizz of a movement at its height." Third-party groups that promote purity are hurting our electoral
prospects. As Noonan quoted Scarborough again, "The national conversation is more constricted, with radio stars, websites
and magazines functioning as unofficial arbiters and limiters of domestic and foreign policy debate." Our friends and allies
are in a strong position to help promote the Party's ideas and encourage a diversity of ideas and solutions consistent with
our core principles. Recommendation: 1. Our friends and allies must realize that the Party is at its best as the Party of
ideas, and healthy debate of those ideas is fundamentally good for the Republican Party.
Objective(s):
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