by Dr. Ellen Brandt and Robert Heiler
Something momentous is occurring in the 2016 presidential election cycle, and it centers on a revival of the Politics of Inclusion, particularly within our Republican Party.
Although there are signs of this changing the past few weeks, the Democrats still cluster around a doctrinaire candidate, representing the status quo ante and anointed as the official frontrunner years before the nominating process began.
In stark contrast, the GOP field is as wide open as it has ever been within our Party's more-than-160-year history. Far from embracing the status quo, the 17 declared Republican presidential candidates represent a spectrum of experience, opinions, doctrines, and agendas as wide and inclusive as America itself is at this important juncture in our political history.
And most of our fellow Republicans believe this is a good thing, beneficial to our Party and beneficial to our country.
Republicans are once again declaring ourselves the Big Tent Party, welcome to all and strong and secure enough to foster vibrant debate and discussion, as we work to bridge our differences and come up with viable consensus solutions to our nation's problems and ways to embrace our coming opportunities.
Towards this end, we have established the Party of Yes blog and a Party of Yes Group at LinkedIn, with the intention of setting up a similar Group at Facebook and a dedicated interactive website within the near future. At some point, we may also choose to register formally as a nonprofit organization.
Our purposes in founding this Group and this blog are threefold:
First, we wish to enlist the participation of both Republicans with mostly Moderate views (like Ellen) and Republicans with mostly Conservative views (like Robert) to debate the GOP's points of dissension and conflict, not in order to enshrine them as insoluble, but rather to help figure out ways to compromise, "horse trade," and reach viable consensus on issues, so we can present a united Party front as we approach the 2016 election.
Second, we intend to do a regular series of interviews - positive interviews, in the spirit of permitting and welcoming all voices - with most of the GOP declared presidential candidates and various other theorists, activists, movers and shakers within today's vibrant GOP.
We intend to present articles based on these interviews to the general LinkedIn (and soon Facebook) audiences, hoping that these interesting and valuable presentations will eventually make their way throughout the entire Internet.
Some of this will be corrective in nature, since we believe the so-called "mainstream media" on the Internet, far too concentrated and in too few figurative "hands," has been narrowly focused on certain candidates and issues to the exclusion of most others, giving a false picture of the race for the presidency and of the range of ideas and issues Republicans care most about right now.
We also intend to begin a series of issues-oriented articles, focusing on specific issues per-story and garnering the ideas and stances on each issue from a range of candidates and other influential Republicans.
These stories will also be posted in the main LinkedIn content streams, as well as within the LinkedIn and Facebook Groups. And we are soliciting short opinion pieces written by others within the GOP, including articles about state and local issues, written by sitting government officials; candidates for state or local office; and the activists backing such officials and candidates.
Along these lines, we are actively seeking one or several active politicians as co-moderators for the Groups, the blog, and the eventual website.
We would prefer people who are long-time respected activists within the Party and who have held political office in the past, but who are not currently running for any office. Please contact Robert or Ellen, if you are interested.
Our third purpose in forming the Party of Yes is as a vehicle for gently, but persistently, persuading major social media sites, search engines, and general news publications on-line to pay far more attention to the GOP, our candidates, our issues, our constituencies, and our agendas.
Because on-line media have become so extraordinarily concentrated within the past few years, there is now, we believe, an ingrained bias favoring a handful of attention-getters and opinion-makers, badly neglecting those who haven't managed to shout the loudest or have somehow been "anointed" as worth hearing.
This is a serious problem with the kind of presidential race we have this cycle, with so many valuable voices which need to be heard not being heard to a very great extent.
And the situation may become even more upsetting, if important state and local races and initiatives are starved for needed attention and coverage.
At Party of Yes, we are going to "nudge" the Internet-based mainstream - nicely and politely, but in dogged fashion - to expand and increase coverage of the vibrant and exciting Party our GOP has now become.
Please join with us in this important effort.
(This is a version of an article posted on LinkedIn's Pulse earlier this week, formally introducing our Party of Yes effort to LinkedIn's multimillion-user public worldwide.)
******************************************************
Link to the Party of YES Group at LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Party-YES-7472991/about
Link to Group manager Ellen Brandt's LinkedIn profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellenbbrandtphd
And her Google+ profile:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/115282763756107439379/posts/p/pub
Link to the landing page for Bring Back the Meritocracy!, founder Ellen Brandt's project to help the estimated 400 million "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed" in the United States and abroad:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/114091094386273464410/114091094386273464410/about/p/pub
Something momentous is occurring in the 2016 presidential election cycle, and it centers on a revival of the Politics of Inclusion, particularly within our Republican Party.
Although there are signs of this changing the past few weeks, the Democrats still cluster around a doctrinaire candidate, representing the status quo ante and anointed as the official frontrunner years before the nominating process began.
In stark contrast, the GOP field is as wide open as it has ever been within our Party's more-than-160-year history. Far from embracing the status quo, the 17 declared Republican presidential candidates represent a spectrum of experience, opinions, doctrines, and agendas as wide and inclusive as America itself is at this important juncture in our political history.
And most of our fellow Republicans believe this is a good thing, beneficial to our Party and beneficial to our country.
Republicans are once again declaring ourselves the Big Tent Party, welcome to all and strong and secure enough to foster vibrant debate and discussion, as we work to bridge our differences and come up with viable consensus solutions to our nation's problems and ways to embrace our coming opportunities.
Towards this end, we have established the Party of Yes blog and a Party of Yes Group at LinkedIn, with the intention of setting up a similar Group at Facebook and a dedicated interactive website within the near future. At some point, we may also choose to register formally as a nonprofit organization.
Our purposes in founding this Group and this blog are threefold:
First, we wish to enlist the participation of both Republicans with mostly Moderate views (like Ellen) and Republicans with mostly Conservative views (like Robert) to debate the GOP's points of dissension and conflict, not in order to enshrine them as insoluble, but rather to help figure out ways to compromise, "horse trade," and reach viable consensus on issues, so we can present a united Party front as we approach the 2016 election.
Second, we intend to do a regular series of interviews - positive interviews, in the spirit of permitting and welcoming all voices - with most of the GOP declared presidential candidates and various other theorists, activists, movers and shakers within today's vibrant GOP.
We intend to present articles based on these interviews to the general LinkedIn (and soon Facebook) audiences, hoping that these interesting and valuable presentations will eventually make their way throughout the entire Internet.
Some of this will be corrective in nature, since we believe the so-called "mainstream media" on the Internet, far too concentrated and in too few figurative "hands," has been narrowly focused on certain candidates and issues to the exclusion of most others, giving a false picture of the race for the presidency and of the range of ideas and issues Republicans care most about right now.
We also intend to begin a series of issues-oriented articles, focusing on specific issues per-story and garnering the ideas and stances on each issue from a range of candidates and other influential Republicans.
These stories will also be posted in the main LinkedIn content streams, as well as within the LinkedIn and Facebook Groups. And we are soliciting short opinion pieces written by others within the GOP, including articles about state and local issues, written by sitting government officials; candidates for state or local office; and the activists backing such officials and candidates.
Along these lines, we are actively seeking one or several active politicians as co-moderators for the Groups, the blog, and the eventual website.
We would prefer people who are long-time respected activists within the Party and who have held political office in the past, but who are not currently running for any office. Please contact Robert or Ellen, if you are interested.
Our third purpose in forming the Party of Yes is as a vehicle for gently, but persistently, persuading major social media sites, search engines, and general news publications on-line to pay far more attention to the GOP, our candidates, our issues, our constituencies, and our agendas.
Because on-line media have become so extraordinarily concentrated within the past few years, there is now, we believe, an ingrained bias favoring a handful of attention-getters and opinion-makers, badly neglecting those who haven't managed to shout the loudest or have somehow been "anointed" as worth hearing.
This is a serious problem with the kind of presidential race we have this cycle, with so many valuable voices which need to be heard not being heard to a very great extent.
And the situation may become even more upsetting, if important state and local races and initiatives are starved for needed attention and coverage.
At Party of Yes, we are going to "nudge" the Internet-based mainstream - nicely and politely, but in dogged fashion - to expand and increase coverage of the vibrant and exciting Party our GOP has now become.
Please join with us in this important effort.
(This is a version of an article posted on LinkedIn's Pulse earlier this week, formally introducing our Party of Yes effort to LinkedIn's multimillion-user public worldwide.)
******************************************************
Link to the Party of YES Group at LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Party-YES-7472991/about
Link to Group manager Ellen Brandt's LinkedIn profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellenbbrandtphd
And her Google+ profile:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/115282763756107439379/posts/p/pub
Link to the landing page for Bring Back the Meritocracy!, founder Ellen Brandt's project to help the estimated 400 million "Highly-Educated But Under-Employed" in the United States and abroad:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/114091094386273464410/114091094386273464410/about/p/pub
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