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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.
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??
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.
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