http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-rules-matter/article/2000075#.VmI-eM2IWBY.twitterThe Trump phenomenon continues apace, immune to the boorishness and ignorance of its avatar. It does not seem to matter what Donald Trump says or does—he continues to lead the Republican field by a wide margin.
Often overlooked when scrutinizing Trump's dominance are the rules of the Republican nomination process. These are not a sufficient condition for Trump's ascent, but they are certainly a necessary factor. The GOP's rules used to work well for the party because its voters and leaders trusted and respected one another. But this mutual geniality has been replaced with condescension and suspicion, which has created a massive power vacuum for a demagogue like Trump to fill.
The rules of a political institution matter a great deal. They allocate power to the different interests represented within it, channeling a vast panoply of individual preferences into a collective result. An appreciation for the central importance of the rules of politics is at the heart of James Madison's political philosophy, which is one reason he is still widely read today. It is also why the scientific study of parties and Congress has been enjoying a renaissance since the 1970s. As scholars began emphasizing the nexus among institutional rules, individual preferences, and collective results, they made enormous progress in understanding how these institutions function.
Simply put: Changing the rules of a game can change the outcome of the game, and the rules of the presidential nomination system underwent a massive change in the 1970s. The old system of convention-selected nominees was thrown out in favor of primaries and open caucuses. Like all significant alterations of political rules, this dramatically shifted power relations.
Previously, the party was akin to what political scientist E. E. Schattschneider called a "truncated pyramid. The accumulation of authority within the party stops abruptly at the level of the state and local bosses or machines; the bosses have no superiors within the party." The old system concentrated power in state and local organizations, and because there was no superintending authority, those organizations had to agree collectively on a presidential nominee. Hence, the quadrennial nominating conventions.
Following the tumult of the 1968 convention, the Democrats instituted nomination reforms that Republicans eventually mimicked. The nomination power shifted from the state and local parties toward the people themselves, through primaries and open caucuses. But unlike the old party bosses, the people at large are not professional politicos. They lack the time and knowledge necessary to select the best nominee from the virtually unlimited range of alternatives. This is how we wound up with the unusual system of the present day. The party voters possess the formal power
to decide, but there is a vast infrastructure of donors, strategists, and insiders—an elite establishment—whose job is to control informally the people's decision.
This informal role of the elites has actually centralized power in important respects. The leaders of the old, omnipotent state and local party organizations were sometimes prone to ignoring the will of their voters (as the GOP did in 1912 and the Democrats did in 1968), but they were geographically and socioeconomically more diverse than today's postreform establishment. It used to be that if a candidate wanted to win the nomination, he'd have to court the local bosses from far-flung locales like Billings, Montana. Now, he heads to Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington, D.C., to curry favor with the elites who possess the resources necessary to run an 18-month-long primary campaign. The only local bosses with influence are from the handful of states with the unmerited privilege of inaugurating the primary season.
Granted, it is hard to argue that these changes have so far produced a different class of nominee. The choices of the postreform era—Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney—all look like the nominees of yesteryear.
This does not mean, however, that the power relations stayed the same. The rules, as noted above, are only one part of the equation. They direct the preferences of the various factions and interests into a final result. If everybody agrees with everybody else, then changes in the rules will not make much difference to the outcome. And the Republican party used to be quite homogenous. State and local leaders, Beltway elites, and average GOP voters all had a pretty similar view of who should lead the party. Thus, shifting the balance of power among these groups did not really influence the ultimate choice.
But the GOP's homogeneity is breaking down, in important respects. There is now a yawning credibility gap separating Republican voters from the party establishment. Average conservatives do not trust their leaders in Washington to make good on their campaign promises. They increasingly sound like New Left liberals in their complaints about the ability of money to corrupt the electoral process. And they have grown cynical about the legerdemain of modern campaign craft.
This is a huge problem for the party establishment, because its power to guide the electorate was informal and based upon mutual trust, respect, and ideological similitude. These bonds are breaking down, and the establishment is panicking. If the voters are rejecting the elites, then the elites have lost their hold over the nomination.
Conservatives inclined to celebrate this breakdown should be cautious. It doesn't alter the fact that the people at large still lack the capacity to make the best choices on their own. Indeed, that is one of the foundational premises of representative government. The power of the people is supreme in our system, but it is delegated to representatives, "whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country," as Madison puts it in Federalist 10. Party organization, which has been extant in one form or another since 1791, is a further testament to the fact that the people cannot exercise power responsibly without some kind of management. Otherwise, they become susceptible to demagogues.
And that is precisely the frame of reference in which to understand Donald Trump: a demagogue who has taken advantage of the chaos within the Republican party. The postreform nomination rules worked for 40 years because of the synchronicity between the voters and the establishment. Now that this is gone, and voters are increasingly unbound by the guiding hand of the elites, they have fallen prey to Trump.
This is why it is hard to put much stock into the opinions of the average Trump supporter. If you are reading this, chances are good that you know about Trump's various inanities, offenses, hypocrisies, and past support of liberal positions. But a vast swath of the GOP primary electorate does not. They pay scant attention to the details of politics. They used to take their cues from the party establishment, but they no longer trust the establishment to "discern the true interest" of the party and thus are vulnerable to the hijinks of an eccentric billionaire who knows how to manipulate the media.
One thing is certain: If the Republican party had the same rules in 2015 as it did in 1915, Donald Trump would not be a problem. His entire candidacy is premised upon the breakdown of the relationship between the elites and the base, whose mutual accord has been central to the effectiveness of the postreform rules. For all its defects, the old nomination process, which placed power exclusively in the hands of the state and local organizations, would have dispatched Trump's candidacy with ruthless efficiency.
The good news is that it is highly unlikely that Trump will win the nomination. He seems to be range-bound around 30 percent support, and it is an open question whether his supporters will actually show up to vote. His current dominance is due to the fact that the non-Trump majority is scattering its support across a dozen other candidates.
The bad news is that Trump has already had a negative effect on the GOP. He is terrible PR for the party, especially when it comes to the Latino vote. Republicans need to win about 35 percent of Latinos over the long haul, but the price of that support cannot be bad immigration reform that facilitates corporate rent-seekers at the expense of the working poor, as the Rubio-Schumer bill did. To win Latino support while opposing cronyism requires a nuanced approach on immigration that strictly denounces nativist appeals. Trump is incapable of such sophistication and is undermining the cause of reform that serves the general welfare rather than well-connected interest groups.
Beyond that, Trump has distorted the party conversation. Too much time has been spent on Trump's antics and not enough on the relative merits of the serious candidates. This is most unfortunate. The presidential office is extremely powerful, and this is the party's only opportunity to vet its candidates. Time spent debating whether Trump made a disparaging remark or gesture about a journalist is time lost, never to be won back.
After this cycle, the Republican party desperately needs to reform its rules. This does not mean tinkering at the margins, playing with delegate allocation formulas and debate schedules, as the Republican National Committee did after 2012. The 1970s reforms allocated power within the party based on a premise of mutual trust and respect between the voters and the establishment. Without that foundation, the rules are a liability and need to be substantially redrafted. The real danger is not that a clownish demagogue like Trump will win the nomination this cycle, but that a demagogue who is not so much a clown eventually will.
Very interesting analysis by Jay Cost. Apologies to the Trump supporters who are offended by Cost calling Trump a clownish demagogue.
It is not true.
Trump is a genuine demagogue.
