How to Hijack a Political Party
The secret to political success is leverage: organize a few like-minded friends, seize control of a county organization and work your way up.
Primary politics and campaign finance allow small groups of highly committed voters to capture political parties and disenfranchise the middle. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
This is part 2 of a series. Click here for part 1.
"Better to lose an election than lose control of the party." The aphorism is usually attributed to some Tammany Hall boss, but it could as readily have been pronounced by Roscoe Conkling or James Farley or Ralph Reed.
The secret of success in business is leverage: Use $2 of your own to gain 51% control of a $4 asset, then use the $4 asset to gain 51% of an $8 asset, and soon you have built yourself a vast global conglomerate using a huge vast amount of other people's money.
Politics is based upon the same secret. If you can organize a few dozen like-minded friends, you can seize control of a county organization. Add a few more counties, and soon you are running a state party organization. Next thing you know: you are running a grand national party.
The secret of the success of candidates like Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle is that participation in primary elections is usually low - and participation in the organizing activities preceding the primary is even lower. There's the opportunity for political leverage.
Business leverage is regulated by the law of corporations. Your $2 may buy 51% of a $4 company - but not an unlimited right to do whatever you will with that company. The 49% minority has claims too. Not so in politics. Once, say, a Pat Toomey has won a primary over an Arlen Specter, he can disregard Specter's voters as blithely as a 19th century railway tycoon disregarded his minority shareholders. Did they want a more moderate approach to abortion? Too bad. We won, they lost, we get our way.
Political leverage has been enhanced by 2 important trends in recent life.
The first trend is the increasing power of incumbency. Once in - you are in, and hard to get rid of. You have a lot of leeway to do as you wish, especially on lower salience issues.
The second trend is the rise of national fundraising. A candidate like Sharron Angle can raise $14 million nationwide even as she is rejected locally. It would be natural for Angle to think of herself not as a leader of the Nevada Republican party, with responsibilities to all Nevada Republicans, but as the local representative of a national political movement, owing loyalty to likeminded people across the country - but not to local people who disagree, even if they happen to belong to her same party.
Click here for part 3.