Steve Hayes told me yesterday that he appreciated my ability to quickly generate opinions on the day’s news without veering into gratuitously contrarian “hot takes.”
I took that as a dare.
Today presents a perfect setup for a bold take, as luck would have it. Overnight there was a significant shift in American politics, its principal takeaway staring everyone in the face, and thus the punditry converges on the same tired assessment.
The only way to stand out is to raise the temperature.
The major development is the outcome of Indiana’s state Senate primaries. Worrying about state legislative contests—let alone intraparty contests—is a grim plot twist even by the standards of this era, and like most other such plot twists, it was foisted on us by Donald Trump. Last year the president declared jihad on Republican lawmakers in Indiana who refused to gerrymander their state to maximize the number of GOP-held House seats; on Tuesday, several of them finally had to face Trump-backed challengers at the polls.
The jihadis won. Trump’s candidates prevailed in five of the seven contested districts, winning by no less than 17 points in each. In a sixth district, the incumbent he targeted currently leads by 3.
Not three points. Three votes.
You don’t need me to spell out the takeaway from that. It’s still Donald Trump’s party, to borrow a cliché that was used this morning by every hack in the commentariat. Ten years on, the GOP continues to function the way the universe did in the famous Twilight Zone episode about the little boy with magical powers. Take care to stay in the good graces of an omnipotent sociopathic child or he’ll wish you into the cornfield.
Had Republican voters in Indiana rejected the jihadis, today most of the political world would be trumpeting the looming end of the hostage crisis that’s defined the party since 2016. That takeaway also would have written itself: Between the hubris of the Iran war, the shock to oil prices, and the president’s dogged disinterest in addressing the cost of living, he had finally lost his proverbial grip on the GOP base. Every Republican official in the country would have taken heart, concluding that at long, long last it was safe-ish to defy Donald Trump.
As it is, every Republican official in the country is drawing the opposite conclusion. The permission they’ve spent the past decade desperately seeking from their base to break with the president was denied again last night. Compliance or the cornfield, now more than ever.
That’s a straightforward take on what happened, and it’s true as far as it goes. The Indiana results will suppress any inchoate impulses toward rebellion that might have been brewing among Republican invertebrates in Congress against a guy currently rocking a 39 percent approval rating. It was an unequivocally good night for Donald Trump.
Whether the outcome benefits anyone else, and whether he deserves as much credit as he’s getting for the result, are separate questions.
A Strategic Justification.
Was the president’s backing truly the deciding factor in whether the jihadis won or lost?
