Primary system

Re “Trump’s team cuts dozens of RNC staff in loyalist takeover” (March 13): Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene celebrated the news, suggesting it sends a message about the direction of the Republican Party. “MAGA is now in control of the Republican Party!!” Greene wrote on X.

Political parties were originally formed by people of like mind who assembled and hashed out principles of government. They began to preach these principles to their communities until they felt able to offer slates of candidates for government who shared these principles.

The two major parties grew out of this, and both began to assemble in local conventions to nominate slates of candidates for every level of government and, in the summer of an election year, in a national convention to select candidates for president and vice president. These national conventions each began with the meeting of a committee where those representing possible candidates hammered out an official listing of the party principles, its platform, upon which its selected candidates would be obliged to stand. These conventions were raucous and sometimes deadlocked, but a platform and candidates emerged to campaign in the remaining months until Election Day.

Today, the nominee is selected in primaries before the convention even takes place. The above headline story tells how MAGA has taken over the GOP from the outside as a result of primaries, not from within. The principles of either party are now what its nominee says they are: upside down and backward. These principles are sold with 15-second sound bites and rallies where often lies or misrepresentations are offered to voters who have nothing invested in that political party: upside down and backward.

What greater reason to move away from the primary system?