Primaries and the eternal Establishment v. Insurgency debate.

I understand why Glenn Reynolds is bugged about this, but there’s a structural issue in the primary system that’s going to exist independently of how the GOP sets it up.  To wit: there are three groups in the GOP.

  • Group A largely thinks that while the political system can of course be improved, and in fact could be improved quite comprehensively, the system as such would work fine, so long as Group B would only stop messing with things that they do not understand before it catches on fire and kills us all.
  • Group B largely thinks that Group A has taken a perfectly good political system and smacked it sixteen or so times with a hammer, grabbed what fell off and used it for their own benefit, and is now actively trying to stop Group B from fixing the mechanism before it catches on fire and kills us all.
  • Both groups are dwarfed by Group C, which largely feels that whoever makes it through the primary system will be fine enough, and look, we have people in the party who worry about the politics for us, and they’re all patriotic Americans, right?

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