Jack Kemp calls for conservative intellectuals and the think tanks that employ them to stop focusing on the immediate needs of the GOP and return to developing and advancing ideas, even ideas that are unpopular with the GOP hierarchy. Kemp thinks this would be in the long-term interest of both the conservative movement and the Republican party:

“When conservatives took political power in Washington, it wasn’t so easy for the think tanks to criticize their own conservative politicians. Indeed, a version of the government-industrial complex arose as elected conservative politicians and business people worked with the conservative think tanks to promote their agendas.

By the late 1990s, many conservatives had come to the conclusion that think tanks should give way to a new era of “do” tanks that would focus more on specific advocacy activities, including getting members elected to Congress, than research and analysis. This change in emphasis, combined with the bureaucratic imperative for broader financial support, led to the creation of an entirely new type of think tank, which began to look more like a nonprofit lobbying firm. A whole new industry arose called third-party lobbying, in which specially organized nonprofit think tanks would lobby on behalf of contributors and elected officials who had specific policy objectives in mind.
Today the network of conservative think tanks seems to have reverted back to something closer to the earlier government-industrial think-tank model than the model created in the 1970s and 1980s to promote supply-side economics, school choice, limited government and personal freedom. It’s no wonder the conservative movement is casting about for a bold agenda to captivate the imagination of the American people.”

Kemp is right that the excessive concern with the short-term fortunes of the GOP and the interests of their business patrons have contributed to intellectual stagnation among many conservatives and libertarians.

One of the unfortunate results of the abandonment of serious intellectual/ideological work in favor of advancing the GOP and pleasing one’s funders is that certain issues are downplayed for “reasons of party.” As I pointed out in my first post on libertarians and the left the association with the GOP/Conservative movement may lead some libertarians to downplay civil liberties issues. The effects of the alliance with big business on libertarian/conservative organizations is the downplaying of issues of economic liberty that run counter to the interests of the funders, such as eliminating taxpayer subsidies of big business. Maybe one reason the typical DC policy wonk spends more time trying to get rid of welfare for poor people than welfare for the Fortunate 500 is because poor people don’t make generous donations to 501(c)(3)s.