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What are the organised interest groups in the GOP that wield the same level of power that unions, feminists, black urban political machines, or the Ford and Hewlett-funded NGO borgs wield among the Democrats? Alternatively, what are the "otherwise sovereign entities" you mention in your first post? In the Greer/Freeman model the state parties are part of the "formal leadership", not an alternative to it. These are kind of meant to be the same question - you clearly have a model of how power works in the GOP which is something other than "Registered Republicans nominate candidates and elect party bosses, and the electeds and bosses come together to run the GOP roughly according to the rulebook" and I would be interested in knowing what it is.
MAGA is the formal leadership of the GOP and has been for almost a decade, having taken control through the formal democratic processes of the party (in particular, the 2016 primary, which was a genuine act of internal party democracy).
Trump ran the campaigns he wanted to, just as Romney ran the campaign he wanted to. Someone made Biden run like a campus progressive in 2020 even though he is an old-school machine politician. The point I am trying to make is that there is no equivalent of that someone in the GOP.
The application of the Greer/Freeman model to the last decade is that the GOP went MAGA as a result of grassroots Republicans voting in primaries, whereas the Dems went woke-prog as a result of the machinations of the Groups. I think this is obviously correct.
This is the opposite of your previously stated thesis. Are you trying to "Duck Season/Rabbit Season" me?
I don't think so. At no point did I claim that the pre-MAGA power structure in the GOP was more entrenched than the Dem equivalent, or that it couldn't be challenged. I was making a comment about where power sits and how it is challenged.
If power sits with formal leadership, you challenge it by voting out the formal leadership. This happened with MAGA. Arguably it also happened with Reagan.
If power sits with "the Groups", you challenge it by setting up a new group and doing enough Group things to earn the capital G. (I am not a Democrat, or American, so I don't know how this works in practice, but it clearly does). This happened with BLM and Sunrise. The Greer post I linked talks about how it happened with the feminists.
In the current year, you can't shift the direction of the Dems by voting in primaries, because whoever wins will do what the Groups want them to do, with Biden as proof of concept. And you can't shift the direction of the GOP by setting up Groups, because elected Republicans will ignore you, grassroots Republicans will laugh at you and the MAGA netroots will ask which Jew is funding your Group.
I think where we disagree is not about how elite factionalism works, it is about the role of the grassroots. In your model, the grassroots have agency, and Trump is proof that the grassroots have a level of power in the GOP that they don't in the Dems. In my model the grassroots as such don't have agency. Individual people - like Charlie Kirk - who organise the grassroots have agency, but once you have organised enough grassroots activists to matter, you, personally, are now a party elite. (Incidentally, Kirk is a point against my thesis - TPUSA is a "Group" in the sense that I am using the term, but I note that TPUSA can't criticise Trump and stay relevant, whereas a left-wing equivalent would be constantly criticising a Dem president.) In my model the GOP grassroots are the terrain elite factions are fighting over - in effect as a source of primary votes and hard-money donations.
Another way of looking at this - was MAGA a top-down or bottom-up phenomenon? The grassroots rage against the GOPe that he took advantage was real, but if Trump doesn't run the angry grassroots cope, seethe, and either stay home or hold their noses and vote for Ted Cruz in the primary (who then loses to Hilary in the general). Trump (or some similar exceptional leader) was a necessary component of the MAGA takeover. It is hard to tell whether Trump is driving the bus with the MAGA base along for the ride, or whether Trump can be forced to dance with the ones that brung him - they don't disagree that often. But where Trump and the base do disagree, Trump normally wins. Iran is the most spectacular example - the MAGA base have totally cucked on this issue and are running around claiming that they always supported the war and Trump has won it.
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