Republicans never really got over the anti-incumbency fever of the tea party.
Until this month, over the past 15 years, just two incumbent GOP senators lost their primaries. That record over seven cycles reflects a lot of under-the-radar work in the party to fend off conservative challengers and help Republicans rebuild after their 2010 primary implosions cost them the Senate. President Donald Trump helped with his protection of incumbents.
Then came this spring. It took only 10 tense days — and Trump interventions against incumbents he’d once backed — to equal that 15-year number as two incumbent senators fell. The political demise of John Cornyn in Texas and Bill Cassidy in Louisiana is causing unrest within the Senate GOP that’s already making Republicans’ lives harder, but it’s also showing something important about the party’s mood.
For all the angst in the Democratic Party about direction, leadership and tactics to fight Trump, Republican voters have spent years hanging onto their own anti-establishment energy. It helped elect Trump. And now the president has no qualms about fueling it, replacing the ideological feuds of the 2010s with loyalty tests.
Trump posted several times on Wednesday to tout his latest tally of primary victories this cycle for his endorsed candidates, reveling in Cornyn’s runoff loss to Texas attorney general Ken Paxton.
Cornyn lost by a shocking 27 points on Tuesday night, a margin that indicates he almost certainly would have lost even without Trump’s intervention. Trump’s endorsement of Paxton and criticisms of Cornyn amounted to salt in the wound, running up Paxton’s margin to numbers even his supporters hadn’t predicted.
One state over in Louisiana, Cassidy came in third place in his reelection race, failing even to make the runoff. Cassidy’s fate might have been sealed the moment he voted to convict Trump in 2021’s impeachment trial, but Trump didn’t leave it to chance, blasting Cassidy at will. This, too, was a blowout loss.
The burn-it-down mood within the GOP base even implicates Trump-backed candidates like Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who is working to fend off a primary opponent and brace for a general election fight. He’s spent nearly $10 million in the past 18 months as he seeks to avoid a runoff with Mark Lynch, a self-funding conservative whom Trump has called a “disaster.”
Graham is favored as he pummels Lynch, but he also wants to avoid a runoff that would sap his coffers and divide the party: He’s got a viable Democratic challenger, Annie Andrews, waiting in the fall.
