Republican Party Down

As the Trump campaign steamrolls ahead, most of us are still scratching our heads. How could this have happened? The usual answer focuses on the grievances of the Trump voter: economic anxiety, frustration with the status quo in politics, the desire to see somebody “tell it like it is," and so on.

But that's only part of the story. While it is important to appreciate the frustrations of those at the base of the party pyramid, we should not overlook problems nearer the top of the party architecture. Systemic institutional weaknesses, combined with a lack of leadership, have facilitated Trump in his takeover of the Republican party. The GOP is in grim shape, and Trump is a consequence of the party's debility as much as he is a cause.

Edmund Burke defined a political party as "a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed." The Jeffersonian Republicans expanded on and democratized Burke's idea. As James Madison writes in "A Candid State of Parties":

The Republican party, as it may be termed, conscious that the mass of people in every part of the union, in every state, and of every occupation must at bottom be with them, both in interest and sentiment, will naturally find their account .  .  . in banishing every other distinction than that between enemies and friends to republican government, and in promoting a general harmony among the latter, wherever residing, or however employed.

This passage points to a tension at the heart of American parties. On the one hand, they are supposed to be principled coalitions whose purpose is to advance the general welfare. On the other hand, they must remain rooted in public opinion, which, per Madison, "sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one." Political parties, then, must be closely connected to vox populi, but they must also regulate it.