What is the Republican Party?

Tom Nichols, a prominent "Never Trumper," and author of The Death of Expertise, has written an op-ed for The Atlantic to explain why he's leaving the Republican Party.

It's hard to take Mr. Expert seriously when he uses the "GOP" as the subject of a sentence, as an entity with undivided volition. He betrays a misunderstanding of the nature of parties as they have been since the nominating process was democratized, and his threatened change in political registration will have the an effect on the party 180 degrees out from his desired direction.

There is no unitary Republican entity. There's the RNC, the Republican caucuses in the House and Senate and their respective campaign committees, state parties, legislative caucuses, all of which operate more or less independently of each other.

Republicanism is defined by the people who happened to show up at the primary and asked for a Republican ballot. It's defined by whoever wins an election with an R by their name.

Party organizations and conventions have no influence and few resources to offer candidates. (Utah is a rare exception -- GOP convention delegates can filter the candidates who appear on the primary ballot, or nominate outright.)

Instead, the RNC and state parties depend on the goodwill of elected officials to raise funds and stay alive. Many state parties have rules requiring neutrality in primaries or bias in favor of incumbents with an R after their name.

Because the party resources aren't available during the primary, candidates build their own teams of aides, volunteers, and donors. They may get some help from party-wide get-out-the-vote efforts on election day, but there's little the party is able to offer to make a candidate feel beholden to the organization.

It's different in other countries.

In the UK, candidates for the UK Parliament, European Parliament, and local councils are selected by party members. To participate in selection of Conservative Party nominees, you have to have been a party member for at least three months. Joining the costs 25 pounds per year (with discounts for military service members and students), and acceptance is not automatic -- party officials can deny your application if they think your membership is contrary to the party's best interests.

Joining the Liberal National Party -- the right-of-center party in the Australian state of Queensland -- will cost you AU$110 a year, but you can buy a lifetime membership for AU$2000. The membership application asks:

• Do you believe in the values of the Liberal National Party - individual dignity, liberty, free enterprise, the family and personal and community responsibility?
• Have you ever been a member of the LNP, Liberal Party or The Nationals?
• Have you ever been a member of any other political party?
• Have you ever applied for, and been refused membership of the LNP, Liberal Party or The Nationals?
• Have you ever been expelled from either the LNP, Liberal Party or The Nationals?
• Have you ever nominated as a candidate in an election where the LNP has had an endorsed candidate?

When party members control the nominating process, and joining a party requires financial commitment and adherence to a set of overarching principles, you have a political party organization that matters -- a group of people organizing to advance a particular political philosophy through public policy.

In America, becoming a Republican at most requires changing the letter on your record at the election board. In some states, you don't need to do anything that permanent; you need only ask for the Republican ballot when you show up to vote, and you can ask for a different ballot at the next primary election. This is the outcome of early 20th century reforms that aimed to open up the "smoke-filled rooms" and give ordinary people a role in choosing the candidates on the ballot from which they would choose elected officials.

While I love the idea of a party organization that advocates for certain policies, holds elected officials accountable to enact those policies, and recruits candidates based on their aptitude to advance those policies, the "reformed" nominating process makes that impossible. If you want to create an organization like that, you have to go outside official party structures: PACs and grassroots groops (FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity), special caucuses (e.g. the Freedom Caucus and the Republican Main Street Partnership in the U. S. House; the Platform Caucus in the Oklahoma Legislature), activist groups (Tulsa Area Republican Assembly, Oklahoma Conservative PAC).

It's possible that when Tom the Expert says he joined the Republican Party and is now leaving it, he means that he donated to the RNC, attended his precinct caucus, served as a delegate at county & state conventions, and made GOTV calls on election day, and now he won't anymore. But I suspect he just means that long ago he changed his voter registration to R and is now changing it to I.

If Expert Tom and those likeminded change their voter registration, it will not teach the stupid GOP a lesson and induce the party to repent and beg for them to come back (as if the party were possessed of a unitary volition). Instead, people who disagree with Expert Tom and his ilk will have more influence over the outcome of Republican primaries, the results of which collectively define the overall direction of this amorphous thing we call the Republican Party.

UPDATE: I addressed the same subject in a slightly different way back in 2012, responding to the frustration of many of my conservative blogging acquaintances: The anthropomorphization of the GOP.