And I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

Via TechCrunch, the Republican party has a site up that purports to give ordinary people a voice in the platform that the GOP will adopt.

The Republican Party is seeking your input as we develop the policies and principles upon which we should stand for the next four years. On this website, you can share your thoughts, participate in polls, and communicate directly with the policymakers who will be shaping the party’s agenda. All comments and feedback will be reviewed and taken into full consideration as we prepare for our convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

“Full consideration” is the equivalent to the weasel-phrase “all due respect.” When none is due, none is given.

The math here is fairly simple. The people who serve on the platform committees in either party have spent thousands of hours over years and years getting to where they are in the party hierarchy. They are not going to hand their power and pet issues over to the unwashed masses just because someone in the party set up a Web site.

It’s good that a party feels like it should make its platform process “open,” but this will only be a pretense of openness. It’s designed to look good to folks like the writers at TechCrunch, but don’t expect a lot of change from this. (Not a knock on TC - the power dynamics in the political system is not their beat.)