The dust has barely settled after Trump backed or adjacent candidates cleaned up in Indiana. State Senators who had voted against redistricting got their two-faced clocks cleaned by Indiana Republicans. The news buoyed the MAGA party momentum and pushed back on all the doomers and pretend Republicans infecting gloom across social media about the midterms, and they just took another hit.
Louisiana Republicans voted to oust Sen. Bill Cassidy on Saturday, rejecting the incumbent who voted to convict President Donald Trump on impeachment charges.
With more than half the vote counted, Cassidy is trailing his conservative primary rivals, Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA) and State Treasurer John Fleming. Trump-backed Letlow, buoyed by the president’s endorsement, currently leads the race with 45% of the vote. With no candidate clearing the 50% threshold, Letlow and Fleming will advance to a June 27 runoff.
Cassidy’s fall from grace is another sign of Trump’s enduring grip on the Republican base, as the president continues flexing his political clout to target GOP lawmakers he views as disloyal to his agenda.
The Republican base loves them some Trump. He polls as high as 86% in approval ratings, and they appear motivated to elect members of Congress who will support his agenda. I voted for this, and I want more, if you like. But does it motivate them to get out the vote in November? Anecdotally, it does.
While it is true that primary voters are general election voters, it is unusual for incumbents, who have more money and reach than their opponents, to lose primaries, especially in the lazy two-year cycle between Presidential contests. Showing up to oust heel-draggers and seat-warmers requires more than just your average 4×4 republican voter. Those are the folks who got the incumbent elected in the first place and keep them there. These folks show up for church every week? Change like this requires the folks who go to church on Christmas and Easter to show up in numbers.
Usually.
If they are willing to do that, they’ll turn up in November for a mid-term, but we’ll need more than that. They need motivation to get people to the polls who even sort of agree with them, who want to vote against Democrats, with some expectation that while the left will do the same, they have nothing to run on but hating Republicans.
Another question is, do the independents who might be questioning their 2024 Trump vote because doomers, black-pillers, and the Handmaiden media lie, stay home, or do they show up to protest vote?
We don’t want the latter, and while Trump’s NRC and his political war machine have a lot of momentum, building plans and gobs of cash for ads, does any of that get them off the couch to keep the wing-nut, tin-foil, political violence left out obscure and in the minority where they belong?
I’m not just hoping it will be so. Dems are not just a threat to the Republic; they are a threat to natural rights, peace, prosperity, and human flourishing. It is our obligation to do whatever we can to keep them from power. Theirs is a motivated form of accelerated tyranny.
After Obama got elected, they adopted the opinion that they could do whatever they wanted. The other side would never have access to their toolbox again. Trump proved them wrong twice. Given the opportunity, they will move fast and hit hard, with the hope that the lesson they plan to teach will end the MAGA movement and any hope of saving the American Republic for good.
Republicans are turning up for primary elections to avoid bad Republicans. That effort needs to grow tall and wide between now and November, and it is up to each of us to help make that happen.
