What the Primaries Reveal About the Future of Trumpism
For all the talk about how Donald Trump’s endorsed candidates would fare in the Republican primaries this year, the results in this week’s races made clear: Whatever happens to Trump’s personal influence, Trumpism is consolidating its dominance of the GOP.
The former president’s scorecard on Tuesday was mixed. Candidates he endorsed won the GOP nominations for governor in Pennsylvania and Senate in North Carolina, while his preferred choice for Idaho governor failed to topple the incumbent and his late intervention could not save troubled young Representative Madison Cawthorn in North Carolina. The Pennsylvania Republican Senate primary remains too close to call between the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, Trump’s candidate, and David McCormick, whom Trump has criticized.
Yet more revealing than what happened to the candidates Trump endorsed was how many candidates endorsed . As in Republican primaries earlier this year, no top-tier contenders in any of Tuesday’s races ran on repudiating the that Trump has solidified as the GOP’s dominant ideology. In several contests, particularly the Pennsylvania Senate race, all of the leading candidates sought to define themselves as the most committed to Trump’s MAGA agenda—even McCormick, an Army veteran and former hedge-fund CEO. And almost all of the
