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Can anyone explain to me this chain of Trump primary victories? Normally I find myself pretty in the loop and things make sense, but I'm having trouble here. Trump as we all know has approval ratings in the doldrums and that extends even to a decent amount of historical loyalist, electorally - recent surveys show his endorsement is a drag in general elections in battlefield states. He also has a mixed at best record of picking primary winners. Yet he's scored several notable wins recently.
He has endorsed former Texas AG Paxton (and dogged by significant simmering corruption allegations), endangering the Texas Senate seat and going against sitting incumbent Sen. Cornyn. His pick for Kentucky Senate seat won the primary despite opposition from both Rep. Massie and retiring incumbent Sen. McConnell (notably, opposite wings of the party despite being somewhat anti-Trump). Rep Massie himself, they are reporting, has lost a primary as well (the most expensive House primary in history, in fact, drawing both Trump and AIPAC opposition) despite drawing support from other somewhat Trump-skeptic but influential right-wingers such as Tucker Carlson, MTG, and Boebert. Trump-opposed incumbent Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy finished third and didn't even make the runoff. In Georgia, perennial enemy (of 2020 election fame) Brad Raffensperger lost the primary for governor. Trump even took out five state senators in Indiana merely over their refusal to jump in the redistricting fight!
So why amid generalized disaster is Trump scoring so many primary victories?
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.
This is what you say when you’ve failed to model someone’s views correctly.
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.
I think it is more what you say when you are trying to oversimplify the views of a group of people.
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.
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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