OPINION

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing about the state of democracy in America, particularly as the battle raged between GOP nominee hopefuls former President Donald Trump and former South Carolina Governor and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.

Two states moved to block Trump from appearing on primary ballots at all, both citing his alleged engagement “in an insurrection.”

Formal challenges along similar lines were filed in 35 other states, at least.

At the Washington Post, a contributor lamented the “extremists” of the GOP field.

But the GOP primaries have accomplished precisely what they were intended to do:

Establish and express the will of the voters in advance of the presidential election.

If progressives find the results of an intact and important democratic process distasteful, they ought to limit themselves to civil, loyal disagreement rather than challenging the legitimacy of the process or outcome itself.

Of course, the primary process — just like the party system — has undergone multiple dramatic shifts since the Founding era.

America didn’t even have political parties at its birth, though they were formed shortly thereafter.

But establishing and preserving the free consent of the governed is the abiding, beating heart of a truly representative system.The GOP primary and caucus process refines the pool of would-be presidential nominees by subjecting hopefuls to a grueling political marathon.

Republican voters all over the country cast their vote, state after state, precinct by precinct, to award delegates to their preferred candidate.

These delegates, in aggregate, reflect the choices of the people who’ve voted over the course of the process.

The GOP nomination is the choice of the Republican party because it’s the choice of the people whom the party serves.

The Democratic Party primary process, on the other hand, utilizes a special political group called “superdelegates” to strong-arm an outcome if the will of the people proves not to its liking.

Ostensibly introduced as a reform measure, it actually gave just over 700 Democratic elites the power to make or break the party’s nomination.The powers that be at the DNC could care less what the ordinary voters want.

We saw it in 2016, when Hillary Clinton benefited from the inflated “superdelegates” count over competitor Bernie Sanders.

In 2020, former president Barack Obama reportedly helped steer candidates out of the race to get in line behind his former running mate Joe Biden.

And this time around, challenger Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has drawn the ire of party leaders who are determined to minimize his influence on President Biden’s re-election hopes.

This hardly seems like an elevation of the public will.

It’s also a grave political error, addressed in its own way — and in a very different time — by Alexander Hamilton.

“Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption,” Hamilton wrote in defense of the Electoral College in Federalist 68.

He continued along this vein, emphasizing just how important it is that the delegates be men of integrity, willing and able to accurately reflect the will of the people they represent.

He notes with prescience the “sinister bias” which political elites might introduce to the delegate pool: “No senator, representative, or other person holding a place of trust or profit under the United States, can be of the numbers of the electors.

“Thus without corrupting the body of the people, the immediate agents in the election will at least enter upon the task free from any sinister bias.”

Somewhat humorously, the “senators, representatives and people holding a place of trust or profit under the United States” is a fairly succinct description of Democratic superdelegates.

The party’s electoral process heavily favors party interests and political favorites.

It’s also true that Hamilton probably wouldn’t recognize our primary process today as a whole. But change is not inevitably corruption.

The GOP has changed, but it retains the political machinery necessary for discerning and advancing the public will.

Our nation was forged on the noble hopes and shrewd defenses of men who understood just how precious and fragile real political liberty was, and how hard it would be to keep.

It’s an honor to participate in the political processes that keep our nation moving forward, and a thrill to observe them in motion.The 2024 GOP primaries have not undermined democracy – they are democracy.Timothy Head is the executive director of the Faith & Freedom Coalition.

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