We Have Primaries For a Reason
Primaries are for the voters, not the candidates
Primary season has barely begun and after Trump’s victory at the Iowa caucuses the calls for the other contenders to drop out are increasing.
I find this attitude to be both unhelpful and antithetical to conservative values.
Alongside the calls to end the primary and hand Trump his inevitable nomination are the tiresome, unending, completely unoriginal complaints about the travesty of only being able to choose from “two old white men.” Those statements always annoy me, particularly when walking side-by-side with the “just give it to Trump already!” crowd.
I have defended our two-party system many times over the years. As someone who grew up under a parliamentary system, I am convinced our American approach is superior. That being said, while we end up with two choices, it’s not like we don’t have a multitude of choices. The difference between us and a country like my birth nation of Canada is that in Canada those choices are made at the end (which leads to a chaotic government makeup, often). We make the same choices. We just make them in the beginning of the process.
That is what our primary season is for.
Primary season isn’t just about crowning a candidate. It isn’t about the candidates, it’s about the voters. This is our chance to see our choices, weigh the pros and cons and ask our questions. This is our chance to be heard. This is our “say” even if all we end up saying is “Make America Great Again 2024.”
When talking heads ask the candidates to step down before they are ready, they are really asking the people to shut up. They are telling us that our voices don’t matter. Is this not what spurred a 2016 Trump victory in the first place? People felt silenced and ignored and Trump stepped up to be their voice.
It isn’t fair to silence and ignore the voters once again just because Trump is such a powerhouse candidate.
The things we learn in the primaries matter too. Look at the turnaround conservatives have done on Nikki Haley over the years. That is due in no small part to having to hear her debate on the primary circuit. We’re not liking what we’re seeing, but not long ago Haley was a darling of the conservatism. She was a great governor and we liked that. It took primaries for the social media machine to catch up to her longtime critics.
We also get a temperature check. Primaries are never the same as generals, but they serve to give candidates and strategists an initial mood reading - what base voters are most concerned about, what they’re not concerned about, which approaches work and which don’t. These will all be vital tools in a general campaign and you don’t get those without the primaries.
And then there’s the future. One of the greatest failings of the modern GOP is a failure to plan ahead. We are led by a cacophony of self-absorbed, unimaginative politicians whose outlooks only extend as far as their own graves. Our primary season often serves as a training ground for serious future candidates.
As an example, Ron DeSantis may be considered an enemy to MAGA right now, and he is clearly losing to 45, but when Trump is no longer a factor in the party, DeSantis will most likely become a leading candidate in our future. He’s not just campaigning for 2024, he’s campaigning for 2028 and maybe beyond. The same could be said for any of the more serious candidates. The primary season is the equivalent of putting pennies in the jar. Eventually the jar will be worth a lot of votes. The other thing to consider is that if DeSantis or Haley or whomever you’re looking at does make a lot of missteps and run their campaign into the ground, it’s better to know that now. We don’t get the benefit of voter scrutiny if we let these people off the hook too soon. We need to know if we want to waste our time with any of these people the next go-round.
Yes, it might be inconvenient for the remaining candidates. They may have to work harder and we may all have to bicker longer, but conservatives are the people who say all the time that freedom isn’t free or easy. This is the downside of a free election. Don’t say you want the government elitists to keep their hands off our choices and then advocate for restricting the choices of Republican voters in their primaries.
It seems obvious to me that barring an act of God, Donald J. Trump will be the nominee for the 2024 election. If the people choose that, I can live with that.
What I can’t live with is the idea that we owe Trump or the GOP or anyone in media our undying loyalty or our voices. The primaries are for us, not them. Let the people be heard, let Trump sharpen himself in this season, and for heaven’s sake - stop acting like Democrats.