It was another galling election last week for committed anti-Trumpers who watched President Trump rack up political victories and take total control of his party by shunning those traditional Republicans who sometimes think for themselves. Trump continues to reduce his army of political supporters to the true believers, defying conventional political wisdom by shrinking and strengthening his base instead of expanding it.
But the old rules of politics don’t appear to count anymore. Trump demands the souls of his followers, and even those who have a 90%-plus pro-Trump record fall short by his loyalty standards.
And it remains to be seen if Trump’s latest victory — his defeat of Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie — may yet be turned to Democrats’ advantage in the November election. Democrats can now hope that independent-minded Republicans will stay home in the general election.
“I vote with the president 91% of the time. The 9% of the time my party is taking up for pedophiles, bankrupting this country or starting another war, I don’t vote with them,” Massie told The Hill just before the primary. For that he earned Trump’s ire.
Bigger trouble for Trump may come from his endorsement of scandal-plagued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over longtime incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in next week’s run-off primary election.
Democrats hope that by repudiating the very pro-Cornyn Republican Senate leadership, Trump may have given them a better shot at flipping the Republican Senate seat in Texas to Democrat James Talarico.
It is hard to figure what Trump is thinking, since Cornyn has been one of his party’s greatest fundraisers. According to The Hill, Cornyn “raised nearly $33 million during the 2024 election cycle to support Republican senators and candidates, bringing his career fundraising total for Senate Republicans to nearly $415 million.”
Back then, Cornyn’s fundraising was credited with helping Republicans pick up three Democratic seats in the Senate, giving his party at least a 52-seat majority.
Cornyn’s response to Trump’s betrayal was not much different than Massie’s: “I have worked closely with President Trump through both of his presidential terms and voted with him more than 99% of the time.”
And then there is the very strange background music, a series of events that may finally swing traditional Republicans away from Trump. Author Derek Thompson recently described it in his Substack newsletter, “The End of Morality and the Rise of the Moral Blank Check.”
“Within a 48 hour period this week, Trump: got out of a $100m IRS fine, secured IRS ‘immunity’ for his family, created a $1.8b slush fund for his supporters, was reported for likely insider trading worth nearly $1 billion,” Thompson posted on social media.
Several of those things finally got the attention of Republican lawmakers. Late last week, Republican senators postponed a vote on Trump’s immigration enforcement bill because they opposed the $1 billion bill for Trump’s White House ballroom and his proposed $1.8 billion slush fund.
The Washington Post reported that Republican senators were not satisfied with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s answers when they asked if there were safeguards to prevent the Jan. 6 insurrectionists from being compensated, especially those who had been convicted of attacking Capitol police officers.
Now that Trump’s unusual theory of loyalty has guaranteed that there will be at least five Republican Senate votes opposing these additions to the agreed-upon bill, it stands little chance of passing.