You Don’t Know Mike Duncan, But He Should Be Fired

I bet that none of you right now can tell me who Mike Duncan is. That’s a problem, if you’re a Republican.

On the other hand, I bet that most of you can tell me who Howard Dean is. If you can’t, I’ll help you out. Howard Dean is the guy who led Democrats to a series of solid victories this past election over a slate of generally pathetic Republicans led by Mike Duncan, the chair of the RNC. Duncan was Elmer Fudd to Dean’s Bugs Bunny, the Margaret Dumont (without even the stately dignity) to Dean’s Groucho Marx, the Hamilton Burger to his Perry Mason, the…well, you get the idea here.

Normally, someone so disgraced would slink off into a cushy job at a think tank, or would write a middling book or something like that. Not Duncan. He’s decided to run for RNC chair again.

Michael Leahy, who co-founded the TCOT movement of which I’m a proud member, is having none of that and has called for him to resign immediately. Unfortunately for Republicans, Duncan isn’t only running for re-election, he’s decided to build himself a policy shop that can only end in more crushing defeats.

His venture, which he’s calling the Center for Republican Renewal is an in-house think tank that Duncan believes will send out minions to the masses to find all their good ideas. Then, the minions will bring back those ideas, run them through the big brains back at RNC World HQ, where they will come out all shiny and politically-acceptable. Then the RNC will shove those ideas back out to the masses along with all sorts of gimcrack strategy ideas for selling the distilled and purified policies.

Yeah, I know. I’m all excited, too.

Stacy McCain puts a hobnail boot or two to the Republican party’s backside in the hopes that it’ll wake up and give Duncan the heave-ho. His main points is worth remembering. Republicans didn’t lose because they were bereft of sound policy. Indeed, conservative policy is simple and concise and still stands up to rigorous argument. It hasn’t changed materially for thirty years nor does it need to. They lost because they forgot what their sound policies were. Republicans have spent the better part of eight years listening to people who are no more conservative nor seriously Republican than a ham sandwich – people who believe that buying off the electorate, Democrat-style, and calling it “compassionate conservatism” is going to lead the GOP to the Elysian Fields of permanent majorities. As we’ve seen in the last two elections, though, when the public wants a bunch of bureaucrats throwing out cash like they were chunking beads from a Mardi Gras float, they’ll get the people who invented Nanny Government – the Democrats.

The only way that the Republican party is going to win back Congress and the White House is to rediscover its basic beliefs. It’s going to have to stop listening to the pundits with books and TV shows to sell, columnists who get paid no matter who wins or loses, and think-tankers who are barely young enough to shave. The knowledge it needs is already thick on the ground, living in the hearts and minds of tens of thousands of would-be volunteers, candidates, and staffers who are right now working regular jobs, raising families, paying bills, and wondering when the heck the party they used to support wholeheartedly is going to get around to finding them again.

The GOP doesn’t need Mike Duncan nor his Center. It needs serious-minded people who still remember that Republicans don’t win elections with clever strategies nor by being Democrats-light. They win when they live and breathe the very simple principles of limited government, individual freedom and responsibility, low taxes, and opportunity for everyone.

Tags: Conservatism, Democrats, Elections, Howard Dean, Mike Duncan, Republicans, Stacy McCain, TCOT