Far be it for me to worry about who wants to be called a Republican, but for some reason, the Republican Party is really worried about it:

…State Republicans also adopted rules for a Montana primary,— rules state GOP Chairman Chris Vance says are now in effect,— that assert the party’s “right to grant permission to use the Republican name …Only to candidates who demonstrate significant support within the Republican Party.”

In most cases, the rules require a candidate to have received 25 percent of the vote at the county convention. Candidates also could have qualified by submitting to the party by last Friday a large number of voter signatures, but Vance said he knew of no candidates taking that route.

…”What they’re really asking for is for the party hierarchy to have the ability to veto candidates,” said Jeff Even, assistant attorney general.

I’m glad that the GOP was the only party that went so far as to write special rules this year looking forward to when the Top Two would be thrown out and we would be under Montana rules. It makes them look like exactly what they are, a bunch of public excluding hypocrites.

While they say they want to fulfill the wishes of the people, what they really want is the public to take a long walk away from how exactly they run their political party.

Let them pick Mike McGavick as their candidate more than a year before any actual vote. Let them make Republican copyrighted brand name that only their chosen can use. I don’t care, they can make the Republican Party so closed to the public that you need a code word to make it into a meeting.

Let’s not wonder though why people hate political parties.

Also, I hope that the Democratic Party takes a lesson from this and runs the other way, fast. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the last thing political parties should be are closed and institutional, making decisions based on their own well-being rather than for the well-being of the democratic process. If political parties really are the work horses of democracy (as I believe) let them act that way and work to get people involved.

Not just in voting, volunteering and contributing (while those are all good things) but simply being involved in our communities and our governmental institutions. The more people are involved in their communities and government, the more trust they have in their neighbors and their public servants. Also, the less likely they are to vote down a tax increase because they don’t trust the politicians that voted it in.

If the GOP wants to push people out of their party and politics, let them. But Democrats should stand for something different.