Trump’s series of victories will be followed by a rough road ahead

President Donald Trump unseated yet another Republican he was angry with when, on Tuesday, May 19, incumbent Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) lost a GOP congressional primary to the Trump-backed Ed Gallrein. Massie's defeat follows the Republican primary losses of Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) and at least five Indiana State Legislature incumbents, none of whom will be going to the general election. But according to New York Times reporter Shane Goldmacher, Trump's series of Republican primary victories could be followed by a rough road between now and the November midterm elections.

"The defeat of Massie on Tuesday served as an emphatic exclamation point on an extraordinary three-week vengeance tour that displayed President Trump's enduring sway over his own party," Goldmacher explains in the Times. "Yet Mr. Trump's viselike hold on the Republican base — a full decade after he locked up his first presidential nomination — poses a distinct conundrum for the party ahead of the fall's critical midterms. He has appeared more keen to leverage his popularity with the MAGA base to oust wayward Republicans than to repair his image among the independents his party will need to defeat Democrats this fall."

The message that Trump sent out to fellow Republicans with the defeats of Massie, Cassidy and others, Goldmacher reports, is "cross me at your peril."

But what worked well for Trump in GOP primaries, the Times reporter emphasizes, could be a major obstacle for Republicans in the general election.

"Then there is the flip side of the Trump effect: If Republicans cannot win primaries without him, his deepening unpopularity with independent voters threatens their chances of surviving in November," according to Goldmacher. "The numbers are stark. However wildly popular Mr. Trump is with Republicans — he garnered 82 percent approval inside the party in a recent New York Times/Siena poll — he is just as unpopular with the independent voters who so often decide general elections. The same survey showed him with a meager 26 percent approval rating among independents."

Goldmacher continues, "How bad is that? It is actually lower than former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s 28 percent approval rating among independent voters that the Times poll found in the aftermath of his disastrous debate in the summer of 2024, shortly before he quit the race."

GOP strategist and Never Trump conservative Mike Madrid, a co-founder of The Lincoln Project, warns Republicans who praise Trump in order to get through a GOP primary that they are "tying yourself to the railings of the Titanic" in the general election. But Trump's stranglehold on the GOP base, according to Madrid, is as a strong as ever.

Madrid told the Times, "There is this resilience with the base — it's nothing short of remarkable. Through pandemic, through recession, through war, through the Epstein files."