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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8147 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026

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The GOP primary voter doesn't really have any meaningful beliefs beyond "whatever Trump wants" anymore. This is partly because Trump himself turned many people into cultist followers, but also partly because Trump specifically activated and changed the very demographics involved in politics, like for example Trump appeals heavily to the lower/middle income white demographic and pushes away the higher earning ones whereas Republicans before him were the upper class doctors and lawyers type. These poor folk are people who were brought in because Trump. And that's why someone like Massie loses. He did the crime of opposing Trump in trying to expose the elite pedophile ring that Epstein ran, that meant opposing Trump and that meant he committed an unforgivable sin among the hardliners. Also of course he went after Israel, which sealed his doom even harder.

It's a big issue with the primary system in general, it pushes candidates towards the extremist and personality cults of their party and away from moderate centrist beliefs. But parties aren't gonna change it because the individual politicians in power don't care about if their party wins, they care about if they the individual wins.

The GOP primary voter doesn't really have any meaningful beliefs beyond "whatever Trump wants" anymore.

This is what you say when you’ve failed to model someone’s views correctly.

He did the crime of opposing Trump in trying to expose the elite pedophile ring that Epstein ran,

The irony is that this doesn’t even need an explanation. Massie making Trump an enemy is the most obvious explanation for Trump working against Massie. That’s as basic as the friend-enemy distinction gets.

This is what you say when you’ve failed to model someone’s views correctly.

The irony in this is palpable, because I remembered you saying something that embodied the sentiment so perfectly.

"I guess I trust whatever Trump wants to do. He knows better than I do."

After all, you are his most loyal soldier.

This is what you say when you’ve failed to model someone’s views correctly.

Well what did Massie do wrong with the GOP besides go against Trump on Epstein and Israel? It sure does seem like when it comes to exposing elite pedophiles vs doing what Trump says, the GOP primary voters value the latter more. And if that's the case then "they only care about Trump" is the answer, because what else could their concern be if pedophile rings aren't enough??

Massie making Trump an enemy is the most obvious explanation for Trump working against Massie. That’s as basic as the friend enemy distinction gets.

And why would that matter if I modeled it wrong and "what Trump wants" isn't clearly the main thing that appeals to the GOP primary voter now?

Massie refused to vote for BBB. BBB was the one-stop shop for Trump’s legislative agenda. Especially as far as the base was concerned, BBB meant funding for ICE and deportations. Massie knew this calculus and decided to vote against BBB anyways.

All this happened before there was much politicking about the Epstein Files. But if your theory is that American politics is run by a class of pedophiles I would ask why such evidence has yet to materialize.

Well, actually, putting it politely, at this point I regard most Epstein conspiracism as extremely unfounded. Worse than Russiagate. But I have many friends who believe things I find more plausible than stuff I’ve seen online. So if you wanted to argue, say, that there are a few Trump donors who are implicated of bad things and Trump is doing them a favor, I could agree to disagree. It’s all just a question of what we find plausible I guess. But when you say something like “exposing elite pedophiles” I really question what that means and suspect it leads to ideas I would deny in strong terms.

However in this case I think it’s a distinction without a difference. The animating force for the Republican voter is the Trump agenda, which is to say, immigration and economics. Trump for all his flaws is the best vehicle for this agenda. There is no one else promoting it. Massie’s agenda is worse to Republican voters because he is weak on immigration.

I have some good libertarian friends who insist that Massie is annoying over principled libertarian objections and that this could have been avoided. Maybe, I don’t think so.

It’s also worth wondering if Massie could have done the Epstein thing and been tough on immigration. It’s a hypothetical worth discussing. If Massie was a Trump critic perceived to be pushing the Trump agenda harder than Trump, and Trump endorsed anti-Massie, could Massie have won? To repeat the question, does the base just follow Trump’s orders slavishly or is there a logic being acted out? I think the former.

This is not about Massie but Cassidy. But I believe on The Bulwark, they did qualitative interviews of Republican primary voters and of the ones that voted against Cassidy all had the first reason being because he voted to impeach Trump. People will say different things and cite different reasons but at the end of the day, I do believe the Republican base, especially the primary base, like Trump more as a stand in figure for their hopes and dreams, than actually care about the actual results of the Trump political agenda.

This is what you say when you’ve failed to model someone’s views correctly.

I think it is more what you say when you are trying to oversimplify the views of a group of people.

  • There are clearly large numbers of Republicans who think "I trust Trump. Trump has a plan. He explains in Art of the Deal why he doesn't discuss his plans. So I don't need to know what the plan is, but I assume it will work out." If you think that, it is rational to vote for Trump-endorsed candidates in Republican primaries even when he endorses crooks and paedos. There are a few of them on the Motte, but I see more of this group in my X feed because Musk has chosen to signal-boost them.
  • There are Republican voters with coherent right-populist political views who voted for Trump in both the primary and the general because he said, credibly, that he would deport unwanted immigrants, bring back well-paid male-coded jobs, end wars-for-Israel etc. They need to do some thinking about whether Trump is delivering on their agenda or not, but at the same time have a good reason for rating "loyal to party leadership and commited to caucus unity" above "agrees with my political views" in a Congressional primary given the ways the Congressional GOP has tended to let its supporters down. Modulo electability, the way to maximise deportations over the next two years is to vote for Congressional candidates who will be reliably pro-Trump. And the Motteposters in this group all say that immigration is the most important issue for them.
  • There are establishment Republicans who always hated Trump, some of whom held their nose and voted for him in the general. To the extent that these people are still registered Republicans, they will vote against Trump-endorsed candidates in Republican primaries. There were not enough of them to swing a primary in 2016, and there are fewer of them now than there were then.
  • There are non-partisan populists (think Tulsi Gabbard or RFK Jr and people who think like them) who think that America's ruling elite is a conspiracy against the American people and were drawn to Trump because it looked like he hated and was hated back by said elite. Trump is losing these people (mostly due to Epstein and the war) but most of them were never reliable Republican primary voters in the first place. If they are Republican primary voters, they will vote for someone like Massie or MTG over a Trump-endorsed candidate.

I agree with @magicalkittycat that if you try to merge these psychographics into a single "typical GOP primary voter", you get a Trump loyalist. But doing so is not necessarily a good idea.

There are establishment Republicans who always hated Trump, some of whom held their nose and voted for him in the general. To the extent that these people are still registered Republicans, they will vote against Trump-endorsed candidates in Republican primaries.

This is too general. Think of a classic neocon-type voter who thinks McCain is the greatest president we never had. He doesn’t vote for Massie because he’s an isolationist / libertarian. Think of an Evangelical who thinks Trump is vulgar and would prefer a Romney type (even if he has a dim view of Mormonism) but dislikes Massie’s stance against Israel. These are all relevant in this election.

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