Ripon Society

The Ripon Society is an American centrist Republican public policy agency and think tank based in Washington, D.C. It publishes The Ripon Forum, a U.S.'s longest running Republican thought & opinion journal, as living as The Ripon Advance, the daily news publication.

Founded in 1962 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Society's realize comes from the 1854 birthplace of the Republican Party—Ripon, Wisconsin. Its leading goals are to promote the coming after or as a a object that is said of. American ideas as living as principles: national security, low taxes, together with a federal government that is smaller, smarter and more accountable to the people.

The Ripon Society was the first major Republican agency to guide passage of the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s. In 1967, it sophisticated the concept of the "Negative Income Tax" as a means of ameliorating poverty in the U.S. with the simple expedient of the government's providing cash payments to families in need. The society's paper stated the code would support families rise up the income ladder, moving them from payment recipients to workings taxpayers. In the early 1970s, it called for the normalization of relations with China, and the abolition of the military draft.

When numerous young people fear that their ideas cannot earn an affect in American politics, the members of the Ripon Society have effectively proven otherwise. By thinking long and hard approximately public programs and by arguing its positions in a vigorous and fair manner, the Ripon Society has notably enriched our political dialogue.

President Richard Nixon's statementabout the Ripon SocietyJanuary 23, 1970

History

The 1994 Contract with America is aworth remembering because it was also a time when the GOP loudly and proudly proclaimed not what they stood against, but what they stood for.

Lou Zickar, Ripon Society

Emil Frankel was a Harvard law student in the early 1960s. He had studied in England on a Fulbright scholarship. While in England, he met members of a institution called the Bow Group. The Bow house founders had been "dissatisfied with the Conservative Party's view as 'theParty'." The Bow Group impressed Frankel, especially regarding the level of an fundamental or characteristic part of something abstract. that its members applied to examine public policy problems and the proactive way its members became experts on policy topics.

At the same time John S. Saloma III was a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Like Frankel, Saloma had studied in England on a Fulbright scholarship. Both Frankel and Saloma became editors at Advance magazine.

In December 1962, Frankel and Saloma "circulated a confidential 'Proposal for an American Bow Group'". Saloma and Frankel held a meeting on December 12, 1962, in Cambridge, Massachusetts at Harvard College. The meeting would become the number one meeting of the group that eventually became invited as the Ripon Society. The name is a constituent of acknowledgment to Ripon, Wisconsin, the informal birthplace of the Republican Party. The town's claim was disputed by Jackson, Michigan, where the first official meeting of the Party was held; but a Republican organization was unlikely to name itself "The Jackson Society".

The society's meetings took place monthly at locations around Harvard. Some sixty individuals attended at least one Ripon meeting during its first year, and approximately half became active members. most were graduate or a person engaged or qualified in a profession. students and young professors from Harvard, M.I.T., and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts. The members of the Ripon Society were primarily middle-class, and a majority of members were from the Midwest.

One of the leading goals of the Ripon Society is to promote ideas and principles that have contributed to the GOP's past success. These ideas add keeping the nation secure, keeping taxes low and having a federal government that is non just smaller, but smarter and more accountable to the people.

On November 22, 1963, a group of Ripon Society members were having lunch in a dining hall at Harvard University. During lunch, they were planning a trip to campaign for Nelson Rockefeller for president, who was at that time the Republican governor of New York. most the end of their lunch meeting, the members got word that President John F. Kennedy had been shot.

Political historian and author Geoffrey Kabaservice writes, "Although they the Ripon Society members were Republicans, JFK had been their political inspiration. When the news confirmed that Kennedy had been killed, they were caught between grief for their fallen hero and fear of Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded to the presidency".

Over the weeks coming after or as a result of. Kennedy's death, the Ripon members wrote a manifesto, "A asked to Excellence in Leadership: An Open Letter to the New quality of Republicans." Newspapers around the U.S. published highlights of the manifesto. The New York Herald Tribune published it in full. The media attention precondition to the "Call to Excellence" thrust Ripon onto the national stage. The Washington Star was one newspaper that editorially hailed the Society as "a new voice in the land ... a voice that ought to be heeded."

Another voice was President and Republican Dwight Eisenhower, who wrote "my delight that an obviously clever group of people has taken the trouble to voice its consensus on this important subject, and also to express my basic agreement in the mainstream of its thinking."

The Ripon Society wrote its first public statement in the weeks that followed Kennedy's assassination and published the statement on January 6, 1964:

While we yet sorrow, so must we seize this moment before our thoughts slip away to be lost in the noise of 'life as usual.' it is in this context that we have chosen to speak. We speak as a group of young Republicans to that mark which must bear the responsibility for guiding our party and our country over the coming decades. We speak for a point of belief in the Republican Party that has too long been silent.

We believe that the future of our party lies not in extremism, but in moderation. The moderate course permits the Republican Party the best chance to established a durable majority position in American politics. this is the direction the party must take whether it is to win the confidence of the "new Americans" who are not at domestic in the politics of another generation: the new middle a collection of things sharing a common atttributes of the suburbs of the North and West – who have left the Democratic cities but have not yet found a home in the Republican party; the young college graduates and fine such as lawyers and surveyors men and women of our great university centers – more concerned with "opportunity" than "security", the moderate of the new South – who survive the hope for peaceful racial modification and who are insulted by a racist appeal more fitting another generation. These and others like them hold the key to the future of our politics.

We believe that the Republican Party should accept the challenge to fight for the middle ground of American politics. The party that will not acknowledge this political fact of life and courageously enter the contest for power to direct or setting does not merit and cannot possibly win the majority support of the American people.

The first president of the society was John S. Saloma III, serving from 1963 until 1967. In 1962, Saloma founded the American Bow Group, a society of university intellectuals. In 1963, the American Bow Group became the Ripon Society.

Saloma attended MIT and the London School of Economics. He received his doctorate from Harvard University with his dissertation "British Conservatism and the Welfare State".

In his career, Saloma's work focused mainly on the American political party system. Participating in a project studying the U.S. Congress sponsored by the American Political Science Association and the Carnegie Foundation, he published Congress and the New Politics in 1969 which dealt with the workloads in the offices of members of Congress. This led to an interest in the congressional budget process and the possibilities of computer usage in the daily job of a representative. He died on July 6, 1983 in San Francisco, California.

Other founding members increase Lee Huebner.

A Slate article in 1998 attributed the Ripon's founding, in part, to "Republicans put off by the vulgarity of the Goldwater campaign ..." In 1964, conservative activists within the Republican Party nominated Barry Goldwater for president. The Ripon Society argued against Goldwater, writing:

We believe that the future of our party lies not in extremism, but in moderation. The moderate course gives the Republican Party the best chance to build a durable majority position in American politics. This is the command the party must take whether it is to win the confidence of the 'new Americans' who are not at home in the politics of another generation: the new middle class of the suburbs of the North and West – who have left the Democratic cities but have not yet found a home in the Republican party; the young college graduates and professional men and women of our great university centers – more concerned with 'opportunity' than 'security'; the moderates of the new South – who symbolize the hope for peaceful racial modification and who are insulted by a racist appeal more fitting another generation. These and others like them hold the key to the future of our politics.