Reply #44: The Foundations of Party Power by Walter Karp [View All]

[barbaraann]

It was a Republican state party boss, Senator Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania, who early this century stated with notable candor the basic principle and purpose of present-day party politics. In the face of a powerful state and national resurgence of reform and the sentiments of the majority of the Republican rank and file, Penrose put up a losing slate of stand-pat party hacks. When a fellow Republican accused him of ruining the party, Penrose replied, "Yes, but I'll preside over the ruins." Given a choice between winning elections with reform candidates and maintaining his and the regulars' control over the Pennsylvania party, Penrose chose to control the party. In 1918 when an insurgent group, known as the Nonpartisan League, beat the regular candidates in the Republican primaries of North Dakota and Idaho, Republican regulars in those states made the same choice. In the general election, they threw in with the opposition Democrats to defeat their fellow Republicans. In Iowa, four years later, Republican regulars worked strenuously to elect a Democrat when an insurgent Republican won the party's Senatorial nomination and for the same reason: the election of those Republican candidates threatened the regulars' control over the state party. To put the matter as concisely as possible: insofar as a state party is controlled at all, the sole abiding purpose, the sole overriding interest of those who control it, is to maintain that control. This, not election victory, is the fundamental and unswerving principle of party politics in America, and the full implications of that principle of action, the extent to which it governs the deeds of party politicians from the most obscure to the most eminent, are the burden of all that follows in this book.

To begin to grasp what that principle of action means, it is essential to clear up an ambiguity regarding the term "party" itself, for party politics is largely hidden behind that ambiguity. Nominally a state party is a coalition of local party units - themselves smaller coalitions of politically active citizens from each legislative district of the state (the basic unit of a state party) - concerned with electing candidates of their choice to the state legislature and with voicing their views in the statewide party coalition. Insofar as each local party coalition is competing for election victory, it is independent, since the members are bound to concern themselves first and foremost with representing local sentiment, both in choosing local candidates to the legislature and in voicing their preferences in the statewide coalition's choice of statewide candidates. This is one meaning of the term "party," and the prevailing party doctrine describes to some extent the politics of such a party.

...http://www.justicedemanded.org/nh2.htm