Mr. Steele, I implore you to support this resolution.

From the annals of The Best Ideas Evar, a proposed resolution circulating among RNC members for consideration at their January 2010 meeting. The text of the resolution is essentially a 10-point ideological purity test; any candidate who fails to meet at least 8 of the 10 requirements would be ineligible for RNC endorsement or financial support in 2010. The document reads like an iTunes playlist of the GOP's greatest hits:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.

If this resolution actually passes in January, the message could not be clearer: The Republican Party is no longer a big tent, an open tent, or really a tent of any kind. It is a closed-door meeting room for a very particular subset of like-minded Americans. There is no room for moderates, centrists, or independents. There is no room for discussion, debate, compromise, or dissent. There is certainly no room for liberals who might have principled disagreements with the Obama Administration. It's like Calvin and Hobbes's Get Rid Of Slimy girlS (G.R.O.S.S.) clubhouse writ large on the national stage.


It was a Republican president, Richard Nixon, who coined the phrase "silent majority" to describe the plurality of the electorate, those who are good people and good citizens but who are not passionately engaged in the political process. And it was another Republican president, Ronald Reagan, who won back-to-back electoral landslides in large part by reaching out to that silent majority. Although this resolution is named in Reagan's memory, the Republican Party is clearly rejecting that part of his legacy. (Say what you want about President Reagan, but you can't deny his electoral popularity.)

Even if this resolution doesn't pass, it is clear that the power base of today's GOP is with the birthers and deathers and teabaggers, and its leadership is the Sarah Palins and Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs. Meanwhile, the Charlie Crists, Olympia Snowes, and Dede Scozzafavas are being unceremoniously dumped out the back of the G.R.O.S.S. treehouse.

On the plus side, this brilliant new strategy will inevitably implode (which is why I only give it a 10% chance of passing in January). Political ideologies and political parties cannot survive by playing only to their base, nor can they survive by closing themselves off from the rest of the world. Therefore, Brainism strongly endorses the "Resolution on Reagan's Unity Principle for Support of Candidates," and urges RNC Chairman Michael Steele to give it his loudest, fullest, deepest-throated, hippy-hoppiest support.