That’s an arresting line from this Matt Bai piece on the Republican Party. I consider changing the structure of primaries one of the more important political reform agenda items. See this good report from Unite America on the topic also.

From the Bai piece:

When you hear a Romney or a Cheney calling out Trump’s lies and condemning his anti-American rhetoric, it’s like you’re seeing the collapse of a star in the night sky — an event that seems to be happening in the here and now, but that’s actually just an afterimage of something dying long ago.

I will admit: I didn’t think that’s how it would turn out after Trump left the scene. I still believe that most Americans live in a center-right space on the political spectrum, and I expected that Republican Washington, having writhed its way through the Trumpian plague, would set about reclaiming them.

But the modern primary system makes a loser of reason, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it would take a new movement, most likely independent, to revive anything like traditional conservatism in the years ahead.