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The Republican Party, like the Democrat Party, the Right-to-Life Party, New York’s Conservative Party, and - in the old days - Ross Perot’s Reform Party, is a private organization, not a governmental one. Like all of us, it obeys the laws of the US and of each of the states in which it exists.
All private organizations exercise freedom of association, and you can’t join if it won’t have you. Let alone become the head of the organization.
Now, political parties exist to win elections, and as such they exist to attract adherents - but they do not exist to attract proponents of inimical ideals who want to rule or ruin the party. It is in fact necessary that they oppose such people. In that sense it is like FR - JimRob has his moderators, and they impose (what they take to be) the minimum discipline necessary to keep the forum from turning, over time, into DU.
So there is a tension between the motive of inclusiveness, such that (reductio ad absurdum) JimRob is not the only member, and discipline, such that the organization does not become host to (reductio ad absurdum) porno images and socialist claptrap to the extent that only a Democrat, and not JimRob himself, would want to be a member. JimRob and his mods have, over the long run, done a superb job. But I am confident that JR himself would say that it hasn’t always been easy.
IMHO the application of the above to the Republican Party, and Donald Trump (and, FTM Ted Cruz) is this:
Altho Ronald Reagan was a liberal Democrat in the Truman era, he spoke extensively an conservative principles in the 1950s and would have registered as a Republican in 1960 but for the perceived tactical advantage of remaining a Democrat while advocating for Nixon. By 1964 he was making “the speech,” A Time for Choosing, for Goldwater. He had a conservative track record as governor of California under his belt by 1976, and when he won the nomination in 1980 he became the most conservative nominee, and then POTUS, since Calvin Coolidge.
The case is otherwise with Trump. Trump is attracting people the Republican Establishment has claimed to want to attract, but he is not a Reaganesque conservative firebrand but a populist. Cruz is likewise unappealing to the Establishment, but that is because the Republican Establishment has (as Rush puts it) become essentially the Washington Generals to the Democrats’ Harlem Globe Trotters. That is, the GOP has been sailing under a false flag of conservatism. A real conservative voter finds himself with a false choice of a ~~liberal~~ socialist and a ~~conservative~~ passive socialist.
GOPe finds itself under attack from a Cruz movement of conservatism, and a Trump “populist” - in its own way Alinskyite - movement. The Republican Party, like the government itself, is a representative “republic” model. In his attack on Cruz for playing the game as the rules in Colorado specified, Trump appeals to the “democratic” pretensions of this “representative” system. Trump is simply looking at the chess board, yelling “cheater!” and turning the table over. Great theater. And the “mainstream media” loves it. Trump is playing a game that the media is willing to play patsy for. Temporarily.
It is not at all obvious to me that this game can continue into the general election, any more than it did with John McCain when he was running in the general election. IMHO “the media” loves the theater Donald is putting on. Now. But it will always default to the real thing in October. The real thing is unrestricted Alinsky rules. Conservatives don’t do that. We go to Washington, petition the government (which studiously ignores us) for a redress of grievances, pick up the trash leaving no trace (other than increased cleanliness) behind, and go home.