Retooling a post-2016 Republican Party

Republicans seem down on their party. In fact, they’re in open rebellion against it. This is not because the party has failed its purpose. Political parties exist for organizing voters to support a slate of like-minded or strategically affiliated candidates. They help politicians get into power and stay in power. Republicans control both houses of Congress and a trifecta of the senate, house, and governorship in 23 states compared to only seven for the Democrats. That looks like an effective party.

But people are upset because, as they see it, those whom parties have helped put in power have served themselves instead of accomplishing what they promised to do. These people may be overestimating what is politically possible in a sharply partisan, ideologically divided Congress. Nonetheless, given the dominance of outsiders and disrupters in the GOP primaries, the impression borders on universal.

Having suffered notable failures in advancing the liberty agenda,the Republican Party could help itself with the rank and file by focusing on local community engagement. At a recent Manhattan Institute conference on welfare reform, someone asked a panelist—a black pastor from Texas—whether political parties contribute anything to helping poor people in socially blighted communities. He said no. But could the answer be yes?

If the Republican Party were to remake itself into an agency of personal empowerment, it could be more successful as an office-seeking, policy-promoting organization.

It could take a lesson from Tammany Hall—but without the corruption, patronage, and mob connections. For 150 years after 1789, Tammany Hall was a benevolent association—essentially a political machine—closely tied with the Democratic Party in New York City. When Irish immigrants were a despised minority, Tammany was there to help them with the practical hurdles of life. In exchange, the Irish were fierce Democratic backers. If political parties would serve people on the front end, then people, especially the most vulnerable, would trust them more on the back end—the faraway-halls-of-power end.

The Republican Party advocates the creative potential of all human beings that opportunity and liberty release for everyone’s benefit. So it supports policies of small government and free markets over and against the crippling soft despotism of the welfare state. But it would have more credibility, especially among those most desperately in need of liberty’s talent-releasing benefits, if it were organized in the neediest communities, where it could teach life skills and job skills and help people network for the next step up. Conservative black churches would be the natural allies of such a 21st century Republican Party.

A practical focus on the stake that the working class has in liberty, enterprise, and ownership in conjunction with the helping hands of community-based institutions would shake up the political demographics and strengthen the political trust that is so depleted in our day.