Margery Eagan (“Who are the voters supporting Scott Lively?’’ Opinion, May 14) wasn’t at the Massachusetts Republican Convention — I imagine she wouldn’t be caught dead there. But I was there, and very few of the delegates voting for Lively knew anything about his background or writings. Many who threw their vote his way sincerely thought they were going to make Governor Baker a stronger candidate in November. I even know a gay delegate who voted for Lively for that reason.

The little more than a quarter of the Republican delegates who voted for Lively were trying to send a message to the Mass. GOP to be more conservative, nothing more. Eagan conveniently omits that Donald Trump amassed over 1 million votes in her beloved blue Bay State. The lead of her op-ed should have expressed astonishment that so few hard-core Republicans, committed enough to spend a beautiful spring day inside the DCU Center, broke ranks and voiced a small measure of their discontent with the far more moderate 73 percent of the Mass. GOP in attendance.

Nevertheless, Baker now can show this Commonwealth what the Massachusetts Republican Party actually stands for, by focusing on the bread-and-butter and public safety issues that affect the middle class, not those faux distractions that so obsess the mainstream media and its professional-class readership. He will easily win the GOP’s nomination in September (not to mention the general election in November) because he is a very good governor — 100 percent of this Commonwealth’s Republicans have learned that.

In trying to smear all Massachusetts Republicans with Lively and Trump, however, Eagan shows she hasn’t learned two chief lessons from the 2016 presidential election: First, Trump didn’t win that election; Hillary Clinton and her elitist blue-state media and celebrity supporters lost it. Second, the surest way to get voters to cast their ballots for candidates you feel are deplorable is by casting those voters themselves as deplorable.

Brian Burke

Stow

The writer is a Republican state committeeman for the Middlesex-Worcester District. The views expressed here are his own.