Disorganized Republicans Are Gearing Up for a Loss in the General Election

America doesn't need its local party bosses back. But what Republicans need are some semblance of party control. Why is this important? Because without party control, there is disorganization, which will make it hard to form a cohesive party platform.
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The Big Picture

Forget about the primaries - look at the larger picture: the Republicans are gearing up for a loss in the general election. They have no core message at all. An Obama referendum is a tagline and stirs up the Republican base, but it isn't a sustainable message, especially when the president has a 48% approval rating and has remained relatively steady throughout the year. In comparison, Carter's approval rating in 1979 fluctuated from the 20s to the 50s. Then, the Republican Party's anti-Carter and "Morning in America" campaign worked because Carter was failing. Today, Obama and the Democrats are not.

Primaries and caucuses are supposed to bring out differences in candidates but at the end of the season, a party can only win if there is unity. Even in the bitter Democratic race in 2007, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton came together and won because of unified core values in the general election.

The History

Political parties used to have incredible power in America. Often run locally by party "bosses," the bosses set the rules and chose the candidates. We have come a long way from those days, indicting many bosses in the early-mid 1900s and ending an era of massive corruption in politics.

For example, there was "Boss" Tweed who once controlled politics in New York state, running Tammany Hall, a New York Democratic political machine that was founded in 1786. Tammany Hall eventually began to collapse in the 1930s and by the 1960s, was finished for good. As Tweed's biographer Kenneth D. Ackerman wrote, his system was impactful: "The Tweed ring at its height was an engineering marvel, strong and solid, strategically deployed to control key power points: the courts, the legislature, the treasury and the ballot box."

Of course, political bosses didn't just exist in New York. There was "Nucky" Johnson who ran Atlantic City from the 1910s until his conviction and imprisonment for tax evasion in 1941; Thomas Pendergast who controlled Kansas City and Jackson County, Missouri from 1925 to 1939 until being convicted of income tax evasion; and Richard Daley of Chicago, who never faced imprisonment (although many members of Daley's administration were charged and convicted of corruption).

In the 1950s, as political bosses lost power, the American Political Science Association (APSA) decided to examine the best way for political parties to operate so that they were relevant. APSA formed a committee and published a report entitled "A Report of the Committee on Political Parties: Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System." It found that "historical and other factors have caused the American two-party system to operate as two loose associations of state and local organizations with very little national machinery and very little national cohesion." As it turns out, the report foreshadowed events today. It is clear that the Republican Party has little control over its candidates - most notably, Donald Trump.

The best example of a lack of party control occurred in September when Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Preibus traveled from D.C. to New York to visit Mr. Trump at his 58-story Trump Tower so that Trump could sign a loyalty pledge. In signing this pledge, Trump promised to endorse any future Republican presidential nominee and not run as a write-in or Independent candidate.

It was official: Donald Trump had Reince Preibus wrapped around his finger.

The Conclusion

America doesn't need its local party bosses back. But what Republicans need are some semblance of party control. Why is this important? Because without party control, there is disorganization, which will make it hard to form a cohesive party platform.

What do Republicans, as a party, stand for today? Tax relief for small businesses? Reining in excessive spending? Building walls? Banning Muslims? I don't know, do you?

Instead, the easiest solution for Republicans is to continue embracing "anti-Obama" messaging just as Democrats did with "anti-Bush" rhetoric in 2004. And in 2004, the Democrats lost.

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