Who Let the RINOs Out? The Transformation of the Republican National Committee, 2004-2026

• In Event: Transformations of Right Wing Politics

Abstract

How do movements reshape party organizations? I argue that the Republican Party has undergone a transformation in the personnel that govern the party’s organizational core. This study analyzes the composition of the 168-member Republican National Committee between 2004 to 2026 using a novel dataset of official written biographies. Measuring both the career signals and ideological language present in official RNC website biographies, I find that party professionals with institutional political experience have increasingly been replaced by ideological activists.

Author

• Catharina O'Donnell, Harvard University