The Importance of Activists

Jay Cost examines the lesson of NY-23:

the political power of the Republican Party is not really housed in the party organization - not in NY-23, and not really anywhere else. Instead, party power lies in the nexus of party activists/donors, base voters, and ambitious officeholders/candidates. As the events in NY-23 have made pretty clear, the party organizations play a limited role in the game of power politics.