What Do You Mean “Our” Republican Primaries, Joe?

“Reach out to your elected Republican representatives and tell them to please keep our primaries open,” Manchin said Wednesday.

Joe Manchin’s recent plea to reopen Republican primaries raises a simple question: What does he mean by “our” party?

Manchin was a registered Democrat for nearly 60 years. He built his entire political career: Governor, U.S. Senator, national power broker… inside the Democratic Party. He caucused with Democrats, voted with Democrats, voted for Chuck Schumer, and helped advance Democratic priorities in Washington. It was not until 2024, when his political usefulness to the party waned, that he suddenly discovered the “virtues” of independence and walked away from the label he wore for his entire adult life.

Now, just months later, Manchin is lecturing Republicans about how their primaries should work.

That alone should set off alarms.

Political parties are private organizations. They exist to promote shared values, ideas and candidates. A primary election is not a public free-for-all. It is the process by which party members choose who will represent them. Republicans are under no obligation to let longtime Democrats, newly minted independents, or political opportunists influence that choice.

Yet that is exactly what Manchin is advocating.

He frames his argument in the language of “fairness” and “competition,” but the reality is much simpler. Democrats and left-leaning independents cannot consistently win Republican elections on Republican ideas, so they want to change the rules. When you cannot persuade the base, you try to dilute it.

This is not about voter empowerment. It is about power.

Closed primaries protect ideological clarity and accountability. They ensure that Republican nominees are chosen by people who actually believe in Republican principles: limited government, personal responsibility, secure borders and constitutional conservatism. Opening primaries invites manipulation, strategic voting and candidates who campaign one way in a primary and govern another once in office.

West Virginia voters have seen this movie before.

Manchin himself is the proof. He ran as a “moderate” Democrat while enabling a national party that pushed policies deeply unpopular and hurtful to our state. Now, having shed the label but not the instincts, he is attempting to exert influence over a party he never belonged to and still does not represent.

When Joe Manchin says “our Republican primaries,” Republicans should answer clearly: They are not yours.

They belong to Republican voters. Not to Democrats who switched jerseys late in the game. Not to national groups searching for leverage. And not to politicians who spent decades opposing the very values those primaries exist to defend.