I recently attended the GOP University, which is designed to teach fresh committee people about their role in the local Republican party.

I am now the Republican committee man for East Lampeter’s 7th district and the question on everyone’s lips when I tell them that is “what does a committee person do?”

A committee person’s role in PA is that of a community organizer. We are the face of the party, the go to source for information, we find and endorse candidates for local office, keep an eye on local elected officials and we are the foot soldiers for the Republican party.

While in the meeting I began ruminating on the concept of political parties in general, (yes the meeting was pretty boring) here are said thoughts.

Power and Ideology

The basic idea of a political party is to win. One of the teachers at the class said, “winning is the bottom line” it sounds harsh but that is the bottom line. If a party can’t ensure that their endorsed candidates win then candidates won’t seek their endorsement.

Basically a political party is a buyers co-op. Everyone pools their power, decides by vote what they buy or who they endorse then they all agree to collectively throw their power towards whoever the party endorses.

So as a committee person you are effectively trading your power to endorse a candidate as an individual for the power that comes as being part of a group that collectively has much more power than the sum of the individuals.

It really is a circular system where the candidates and the party feed off of each other. In Lancaster, PA if a candidate doesn’t get endorsed then 90+% of the time they don’t win and it is much easier to wine and dine a handful of powerful committee people than it is to persuade the majority of republican voters in a primary. The more the candidates focus on playing with the party the more powerful the party becomes and the more the candidates need to focus on the party.

In Lancaster there are quite a few more republicans than their are democrats which (except for in downtown Lancaster) eliminates the power of the Democrat party. The power is eliminated because they can’t ensure that a local Democrat candidate can win therefore a Democrat candidate doesn’t gain much by sucking up to the local party.

Because they don’t have much power Democrat committee people tend to be more ideological and are more effective as community organizers because they are committee members because they believe in the party. Not saying Republicans don’t believe in the party just that there is a large incentive to be a member of the Republican committee because of the power that comes with the position.

Also in Lancaster you have quite a few other political organizations that are vying for a seat at the political table. They are…

• Constitutional Party
• Tea Party Folks
• 9.12ers
• Ron Paulites
• etc.

Because of the way the game is played they have much more in common with the Democrats than they do with Republicans in that they are in their respective orgs because of a strong belief and not so much for the power that comes with the organizations.

These folks are usually fed up with politicians and the Republican party in general (and I can’t say I blame them) but if they want to accomplish real change they only have 2 options.

They can organize a bunch of events, get people riled up and focus on a few high profile races not really accomplish anything and lose public support because they can’t deliver (for example every “3rd” party)
Or they can focus on local elections, field candidates for school board, township supervisor, GOP committee, judge of elections, etc. Focus your efforts on races you can win and by doing so you make your party/organization a force to be reckoned with and listened to.

For example if the constitution party wanted to be taken seriously they shouldn’t focus on state senate races, instead they should focus on school board races. In a lot of local races candidates are running unopposed. Unopposed candidates are no better than lords in feudalistic system. Local races can be won or lost by one person working hard, this provides people with tangible results they can look at and say “I made a difference”.
Personally I joined the Republican party for several reasons. One because the GOP platform is most in line with my personal political beliefs and two because I believe I can do more good getting my hands dirty at a local level than I can pontificating about national politics.

Summary

So my message to you is, if you don’t like the status quo jump in and change it because it won’t change itself, protesting and complaining is only good if it gets people of their butts and into fray.

This year I was working the polls in East Lampeter and a man walked out of the polls and said to me, I just wrote myself in for Judge of Elections because there was no one on the ballot and I got my whole family to vote for me. He also said, “I listen to Glen Beck and he said people should get more involved so I did”. The fact that he listens to Beck didn’t thrill me but the fact that he got involved gives me hope for our political system.

Real power comes when people put ideology into practice.

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Tagged as: committee, gop, ideology, lancaster, pa, power, ron paul, sarah palin, Tea Parties