Empowering party leaders at the expense of the grassroots won't work for the GOP

What GOP leaders are doing today is the equivalent of superdelegates. They’re trying to empower party leaders who want to moderate the party’s image on immigration, gay rights and the role of women while disempowering the local activists who they fear are pushing the party off an ideological cliff. Unfortunately, it didn’t work for the Democrats and it’s unlikely to work for the Republicans now.

America’s political parties have long been weaker than their parliamentary cousins. But it’s especially hard to wield power from above these days, since local candidates and activists control their own fundraising operations and press scrutiny makes it hard for party leaders to bribe or muscle troublemakers in the ways Lyndon Johnson made famous.

These days, a national party that wants to moderate its image can’t roll over its local activists. It must seduce them. That means finding a candidate with enough emotional appeal to the party’s base that they’ll forgive his or her ideological transgressions. That’s what the Democrats found in Bill Clinton. The party’s structural changes between 1984 and 1988 did it little good. What revived Democratic fortunes was a presidential candidate able to signal his centrism to independents and Republicans while also preaching the Democratic gospel passionately enough to win a significant number of white and black liberals. Support from well-funded elites like the Democratic Leadership Council certainly helped Clinton. But ultimately, he had to do it himself.