What's the difference between a Democrat and Republican Gov. Charlie Baker?

Nothing, according to Mary Lou Daxland, president of the Massachusetts Republican Assembly — a group that calls itself the "Republican wing of the Republican Party."

As expected, though, incumbent Baker won the GOP's gubernatorial primary Tuesday. But what some may not have expected was that his far-right opponent Scott Lively would nab 36 percent of the vote.

"Charlie Baker has been running under the Democrat[ic] platform for the last few years more than the Republican platform," Daxland said.

That's why she voted for Lively, the Springfield pastor who vowed to be the most pro-Trump governor in America. Daxland was one of nearly 100,000 other Republican primary voters who cast their ballots for Lively. It was a number he seized on in his concession speech.

"We still got better than a third of the vote here in the primary," Lively said to his applauding crowd. "And the grassroots conservatives are awake. We know what's going on. We are never going back to where we were before."

"Scott Lively is at the fringe," said Tufts University political science professor Jeff Berry, who described Lively's primary totals as "surprising."

He said Lively's anti-gay rhetoric is out of step with Massachusetts, and so his loss itself was no surprise. But nevertheless, Berry said the primary results are revelatory.

"There's a lot of support for him within the small Republican Party in Massachusetts," he said.

But Daxland said she's not surprised. In her view, Baker's moderate proclivities have sabotaged the state's GOP. Daxland said she cast her ballot not so much for Lively, as against Baker.

"We have been infiltrated to keep the party so flatlined that we don't run anybody against the Democrats," Daxland said.