How Trump's Grip on the GOP Is Slipping — One Primary at a Time
He still wins 97% of his primaries. The exceptions are the story.
Earlier this year, Donald Trump went on a highly publicized vengeance tour, using his political influence and spending millions of dollars to take out Republican politicians who wronged him. The Indiana state legislators who resisted Trump’s pressure to redraw their congressional maps lost primaries, as did Thomas Massie, the apostate Republican congressman. Trump went on to target Senator Bill Cassidy for voting to convict him at his impeachment trial, and John Cornyn for, well, no one is exactly sure — other than that Trump didn’t like the cut of his jib.
The narrative was written in stone: despite his sinking poll numbers, Trump retained an iron grip on the GOP, and Republicans had two choices — stick with Trump or lose their jobs.
But that’s not the full story. There are several recent examples where Republican voters have rejected Trump’s choice. These exceptions matter because they show that Trump’s preference is not destiny, and they speak to his weakening grip on his party and on our politics.
This is a change and one that has consequences for the midterms.
The Exceptions
In 2022, Trump tried to play kingmaker. He endorsed a slate of his favorite politicians — people who stuck with him after January 6th and true Big Lie believers. It worked out very poorly for Republicans, because it elevated a number of weak candidates who ended up losing in what should have been a strong Republican year. Trump is the reason Herschel Walker, Dr. Oz, Kari Lake, and Blake Masters became Republican standard-bearers.
Since then, Trump has mostly endorsed the candidates the professionals in the Republican Party wanted him to endorse. He was even willing to encourage MAGA allies not to run in order to clear the field for more electable alternatives. In Montana in 2024, he helped convince Rep. Matt Rosendale not to run so that former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy could. The one glaring exception this cycle was Trump’s endorsement of Ken Paxton in the Texas GOP runoff; every Republican operative (correctly) believed Cornyn was more electable than Paxton.
