Via Steve Benen, Politico is reporting that the RNC will launch an in-house think tank to get its policy groove back:

The think tank will be called the Center for Republican Renewal, and it has been mentioned as part of RNC Chairman Mike Duncan's platform for reelection, but was begun shortly after the election as a new RNC office, separate from the campaign, a Republican official said.

Though Washington has many conservative think tanks, many inside the party and the conservative movement viewed November's failures as, in part, a product of stale ideas, and like the Democrats after 2000, some in the GOP have called for a revival of the conservative intellectual infrastructure.

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 Benen thinks this might not work as well as conservatives hope it will:

But I'd argue that this is a two-step process for the GOP: 1) decide that policy matters; and 2) actually come up with some policies that make sense and that voters might like. Republicans have, apparently, started to slowly come to terms with the prior -- as opposed to, say, bashing policy experts as pointy-headed elitists to be ignored -- but the latter is likely to be very difficult for them.

Why? Because their ideology puts them in a box. They want less taxes, less spending, and less government, which in turns leaves few options for innovation. Healthcare? People already have too much insurance. Global warming? If it's real, let the free market handle it. Energy? Tell Exxon/Mobil to just keep drilling. Recession? Let's have less capital in the system by cutting government spending.

I think that's more-or-less right.  Let's take a look at who they'll be hiring, according to Politico:

The center is hiring six staffers, according to a conservative job board: an executive assistant, economic policy analyst, health care policy analyst, energy/environmental policy analyst, national security policy analyst and legal policy analyst.

Leaving aside the executive assistant, there are five policy areas they're focusing on: economic policy, health care, energy/environment, national security, and legal policy.  Of those five, the GOP is in a state of flux over whether or not a problem exists on two (health care and environment); of the remaining three, two have been dramatically mishandled by the most recent GOP president and the final one is a sop to business that has extremely low salience to everyone but the base.

The real problem here is that the current issue agenda is unfavorable terrain for Republicans.  Look at the exit polls.  The exit poll consortium asked about five issues, roughly corresponding to the RNC's new policy team--energy policy, Iraq, the economy, terrorism and health care.  Only people who ranked terrorism most important voted for McCain. 

Not only did the GOP lose on the issues, but it failed to promote the issues that would be friendlier ground.  Immigration? Crime? These are places that the GOP might have had better luck making a stand, with a relatively more unified party and positions that can be popular with the public at large.  But they're nowhere near the average person's list of "things I need to care about". 

In essence, the GOP might not be built to deal with a world where global warming and tanking incomes are a major concern.  I humbly suggest that they might fare better by changing the subject.