That's a mystification, and wrong. The Republican Party is a confederational, not a Leninist, party. There are rip-snorting battles for control among various factions all the time at the county level and periodically at the state level.
The RNC itself, however, is simply a confederation of the state parties. There are 165 members: a national committeman, national committeewoman, and a state chairman from each of the States, the territories, and D.C. You want to be on the RNC? Go ahead: get active in local GOP politics and run for national committeman or state chairman. Nobody from D.C. is going to annoint you.
The full RNC meets a couple of times a year. It elects a Chairman and an executive committee to hire the staff and run the day-to-day business. Its unending mission is to raise money to help Republicans beat Democrats. Its other great continuing mission is to organize the Republican National Convention, which is the ultimate governing body of the Party. It is the Convention, not the RNC, that establishes the rules of the national Party. The RNC itself is a creation of the Convention.
You want to reform the rules and mission of the RNC? Easy enough, in theory. Get yourself elected as a delegate to the National Convention. This is usually done in your local Republican primary or at the state convention, if you're in a convention state. It's not that hard if you've got serious grassroots credentials at the local and state level. The number of delegates varies by state, but there's quite a crowd. There's usually an "official" slate put together by the state committee, but insurgents can and do get elected. Takes a little work, though.
If there are any past or present county chairmen on this thread, I'd invite you to weigh in. My point is simply that power flows from the grassroots up. That can make for a long slog to the top -- we don't have hereditary peerages like the democrats, with a lot of appointed or ex officio delegates.
I’ve watched the party higher ups, and staff, since before Reagan. By and large they have been unimaginative, poorly communicative dullards, and of a type. Often they assumed, if not depended upon, popular disgust with Democrats as proof of their effective works. When in fact they where little more than wasteful inheritors.