Jay Cost: The Primary System and Party Responsibility

RealClearPolitics ^ | October 17, 2007 | Jay Cost

[RWR8189]

On Monday I sounded off about the relationship between Ron Paul and the Republican Party. My argument was that the fact that such a "bad" Republican like Ron Paul could maintain his position in the party is a sign that the party itself lacks mechanisms to manage its brand identity.

I received a lot of email from Paul supporters. Most of them argued some variant of the proposition that Paul is the only true Republican - and George Bush and the "neocons" are the cheaters. This is all well and good - but this is not what I was on about. I was not speaking in normative terms - hence the consistent use of scare quotes. You can argue that the Republican Party has become corrupted, and Paul is the only pure one left - but all you are doing is changing the adjectives around. What matters is that Paul diverges greatly from the caucus average, and that the caucus lacks the power to keep Paul in line - thus, it has trouble establishing a brand. So, I was not assigning moral blame.

Furthermore, I was not arguing that Paul is the major contributor to the problem of establishing a GOP brand. I used him only as an example because he is in the news a lot. Personally, I think that more damage has been done to the Republican Party brand by George W. Bush.

This brings me to my final point of clarification. Paul's supporters also argued that George W. Bush and the Republican caucus are the ones who have strayed from what they promised they would do, and that they are the ones to blame. I agree - so much so that on Monday I made this exact argument! The caucus lacks the power to induce members to enact

 

[nosofar]

Good article. Parties are in no way Constitutionally protected institutions, even if they behave like it. If they aren’t working, they are much easier to change or even replace than government itself. It would also probably be more useful.