The Internet is awash in hot takes about what is perniciously, existentially wrong with the Trump-era GOP and the party’s disturbing willingness to embrace the Big Lie of election fraud as its new purity test. But what is missed almost entirely in the diagnosis of what ails the party are not the symptoms, but the root cause driving all of it: Our broken election system is empowering a small fraction of voters to wield an outsized influence in party primaries and push our leaders to the extremes. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy knows that former President Trump’s incitement of violence on Jan. 6 was an affront to our democracy. He said as much days after the attack: “The president bears responsibility for [the] attack on Congress by mob rioters.”