Republican Primaries and Trump Loyalty Push GOP Toward Potential Midterm Disaster, Critics Warn

One of the things that is very interesting to me, and we talked about last segment about how the Republican Party has seemingly entered, at least from a primary voting standpoint. They have reached an era where subserviency to Trump, even if there’s no apparent win. Like there’s no gain. There’s no benefit is where the majority of the Republican primary electorate is at. Now look, we have to be specific with this. The Republican primary electorate is not the American public, the same way as the Democrat primary electorate is not the American public. And what happens is, and it’s part of our broken system, is the parties nominate based on their own sort of nonsensical changes by the year standard. And then the people in the middle who decide the elections have to make a choice between the people that the parties put forward, right?

Republican Primaries Increasingly Centered on Loyalty to Trump Instead of Policy Debate

Like think back. A great example of this was 2010. Everybody’s mad about Obamacare, right? Everybody’s pissed off about Obamacare. And you’re like, hey, home run year for the Republicans, right? You could just put a broom up and they should be able to win. And in the House of Representatives, they did. You know, I think they won like 62 seats. But the Republicans lost that same year. And nobody in, you know, history is an interesting thing about what people remember or don’t. The Republicans picked a whole bunch of squirrels in their Senate races. And they in many ways did it again in 2012. And what that got the Republicans is people who could not connect with the people who decide the elections, like the Republicans said in 2010. It’s easier to get away with it in the House races, because it’s very hard for media or opposition or whatever to cover 435 House races. There’s some big ones they get into, but it’s very hard outside of local media to effectively and intensely cover 435 U.S. House races. But if you guys remember in 2010, there were about 4 or 5 winnable Senate races that Republicans lost. And it was because of their candidate choice. Look, the reality is, in some of these states, and the states have changed dramatically in 15 or 16 years. So they’re not even the same states with the same makeups anymore. But we’ll just sort of pick a current state that is still kind of a swing state, the Republican that you’re going to be able to get in a Pennsylvania, and I’m picking up a Pennsylvania because it’s a swing state, or Maine because that’s a swing state. And in the case of Maine, we’ll get to Maine in a second because they have a Republican up for reelection. You’re not going to get the same sort of Republican across the finish line as you could in, say, Alabama. You can be hard right. Now, not totally, as Roy Moore found out, there is a level to which the public will tolerate in terms of your personal behavior, your squirrelness. But in terms of the politics, Roy Moore didn’t lose because of his politics. He lost because people were like, this guy is an insane shyster lunatic. And even in Alabama, we going blue, baby. So there is a limit. But my point is your candidates have to fit in terms of temperament, in terms of substance and most importantly, in terms of leadership and the direction they want the country to go. They have to mirror the electorate. If they don’t, you’re not going to win. And one of the things that I think is interesting right now is in the era of absolutism that Trump demands, and the absolutism is not around a specific policy or an ideological viewpoint. It’s around absolutism in terms of subservience to Trump. The Republican primary electorate. Now, again, you have to put these into five boxes, right? Okay. There’s five boxes when we talk about voters. There are Republican primary voters. There are Republicans. There are Democrat primary voters. There are Democrats. And then there are people in the middle, the kind of independents. They’re all in their own little box, and they all behave and respond and vote differently. The Republican primary voter is completely different from a rank and file Republican, the same way as the Democrat primary voter is often completely different from sort of a rank and file generic Democrat. And you will see in certain elections, Republicans cross over, these sort of generic Republican people can kind of consider themselves Republican, cross over and vote occasionally for Democrats. And you’ll see Democrats occasionally cross over and vote for Republicans. That’s usually actually how the presidential election gets decided. And then there’s this ever shrinking box in the middle, the independents who are always up for grabs.

Historical Election Trends Suggest Republican Candidate Choices Could Hurt GOP in Swing States

And so what’s fascinating to me is in a world where every poll that comes out, every poll, guys, whether it’s done by Republican pollsters like Rasmussen or what’s perceived as the more liberal outlets, often are the more liberal outlets, CBS, NBC, whoever, they’re all to varying degrees telling us the exact same thing. Even Rasmussen, who is the most friendly pollster to Trump, and we talked about this, I think it was late last week, has Trump 14 points underwater. Even the most friendly pollster to Trump over the years has him 14 points underwater. And it’s depending on what poll you look at. Usually somewhere between -14 and -20. High negatives. Trump’s approval ratings are consistently now in the upper 30s. The American public. So when we take those five boxes, right? Republican primary voters, Republicans, independents, Democrats, Democrat primary voters. You know, if we’re moving on the scale from reddest to bluest, they all participate in the national polling, which is how we decide elections, right? Everybody who is registered has the opportunity to vote. The polling of the five boxes from the reliable Trump pollster to the mainstream media all shows Trump and his policies dramatically underwater. And if you look at them as a graph, right, you see it over the past year and a half, it just keeps going down. Like here’s where it started. You know, the old here’s how it started, here’s how it’s going, right? It’s going down. And so the public is at the very least saying, we have major concerns about Trump. And we’re not all in on Trump. That’s not me, guys. That’s one public poll after another. And yet the Republican primary electorate keeps not only saying, give me more of that. They are now punishing any person who raises their hand and goes, yeah, there are some things out there that the public appears very unhappy with. We ought to address those. And that means we probably got to get a little tough with the president, which, by the way, that’s actually the by definition job of the Congress is to be a check and balance on the president. I think that’s one of the things that bothers me most about the fealty to Trump, and it does with any president, regardless of party. The job of the Congress is to be a check and a balance on the president, to hold them at bay, to hold them in line, to make sure everything they’re doing is on the up and up. It’s in line with the Constitution, all the following the law, all of these things. It’s the beauty of the system that our founders set up, in which there are three very, or they’re supposed to be very separate branches of our government, and they’re all keeping an eye on everyone else, not one on one, but three. The triangle, all of them moving right, keeping an eye on each other.

Polling Shows Trump and Republican Policies Struggling With General Election Voters

And so I’m thinking about a Republican Party in which the public at large, the five boxes, are saying time and again, and in a more emphatic voice, it seems, with every opinion poll that comes out, hey, we don’t like a lot of the stuff that’s going on right now. We don’t like a lot of the things that the president is doing right now. And yet, because the Republican primary voter is such a narrowed group of people, and those people in the Republican primary who consistently vote are more often than not, huge supporters of the president. We keep seeing the politicians and the candidates moving more and more into Trump absolutism. And then the contest becomes not who has the best ideas, not who’s governed the best, not who will deliver the most for the people of the district or the state or our country. It becomes this person wronged Trump. You must vote against them. This person was not a proper team player. This person effed around and now they’re going to find out. And I’m thinking of this like two trains going down the track. One train is the Republican primary voter in 2026 and one train is the general public, the people who will be the general election voters. And you think about these trains and they’re moving. And the wild thing is, the train that the general election voter is on is a much bigger train than the train the Republican primary voter is on. And in this bizarre world where these two trains are moving at the same time, or one train is much bigger than the Republican primary voter train, the general election voter not only is in a much bigger train, but they can see the Republican primary voter train. They know that train is there in the world we’re living in now in which poll after poll after poll shows, including the most key topics to Trump’s actual election in 24, the public is turning against Trump and his policies. It’s as though, based on the actions of the Republican primary voter in which it’s just more Trump, more Trump, more Trump all the time, it’s like they can’t see this other giant train out there. And these two trains moving at the same time are going to, in November, run into each other. This happens every year with our elections, in which the primary voter train runs into the general election voter train. And right now, it seems like the Republican primary train, like the general election voter train is the bigger train. It’s going to get its way. It’s going to win the collision. But the Republican primary voter is just like it, like, I don’t know if naive or immune or just holding their hands over their eyes going, nah, I can’t see me. It’s like John Cena, you can’t see me. And I don’t understand how this could be anything but a bloodbath. Bloodbath this fall, even as bad as the Democrats are. Look, the Democrats are heinous. They’re heinous. They’re awful. But the public doesn’t vote the way the primary voter votes. They’re not as into it. They’re not as into it. They don’t research the candidates. They don’t dig into stuff. They vote how they feel in the moment that it’s time to go vote. They don’t have a love affair with Trump, just like they did have a love affair with Biden, just like they didn’t have a love affair with Trump the first time. Very few presidents have ever actually garnered a connection with the American public, by which there is an emotional connection to them, to where they will vote for them out of some sense of obligation. I’m talking about most Americans. Clearly, Trump has a huge swath of voters in the Republican Party that are absolutely emotionally attached to him. The only voters that I can think of in my life that had a literally like, emotional connection to the candidate and voted accordingly were Ronald Reagan in 1984 with Morning Again in America, there was clearly, and he won 49 states. There was an emotional connection to the symbolism, to the ideas, to the things that he was talking about. And Obama in 08, and Obama didn’t quite have a Reagan landslide, but Obama won so many states. He won Indiana. That’s it. Other than that, in my lifetime, everything else is just sort of we choose our presidents in the moment, how we’re feeling, how we’re feeling about the country. We judge our presidents on how we’re feeling, how we’re feeling about the country, and people vote accordingly. And so unless we’re going to ignore every historical piece of data we have seen on elections in American history, certainly in the past 40 years, if we want to use that as our barometer, when the president is not liked by the public at large, or has low approval ratings by the public at large, they vote for the other party. That’s what we do in this country. People were tired of Obama and the Democrats. They took a flier on Trump. People got sick of Trump by 2018. They put the Democrats in charge of the House. People got really sick of Trump and the Covid and everything by 2020. They went Biden. People were fed up with Biden to the point where they dumped Biden. They saw Kamala, like this woman’s an even bigger idiot than Biden. They went with Trump again. People went with Obama in 08. They had the emotional connection. They quickly figured out by 2010, oh, this guy’s a con man shyster grifter like the rest of them, they put the Republicans back in charge. People would have gone with the Republican for president in 2012 if they had nominated anybody with any sort of personality or ability to connect to regular people. Instead, the Republicans, as they usually do, are like, no, no, no, we’ll snatch that defeat from the jaws of victory. Here. Give us. We’ll give you Romney. What people didn’t like Romney, who saw that one coming? And so I’m watching this with great interest about how the Republican Party primary voter in this little train is going forward, in this pattern, in this motion, in this behavior, in these choices. And they’re celebrating doing more and more and more of it, like getting rid of Thomas Massie. Haha. He’s gone. We got another Trump guy in there. Oh, okay. Well, you’ve had Trump in charge of everything for a year and a half. So what did Massie stop? Ha ha. We got rid of him. There’s another Trump guy in there. Look at us roll. Look at everybody doubts Trump’s influence. No, I don’t think anybody has ever doubted Trump’s influence in Republican primaries. Republican primaries, and that train’s moving and they think it’s going great. And then there’s this big giant train over here that is like, yeah, we see you. You don’t see us, but we see you, we see what you’re doing, and we’re gonna meet here very soon. And that’s probably not going to go well for you. Like, let’s talk about some data on this, right? Like, I’ll give you some specific examples of what I’m talking about here. Okay. The House and Senate are two different animals. The Senate, there are currently 53 Republicans. And don’t forget the Republican brand itself is ass. That used to be, we used to have that saying on the old radio show, the Republicans are ass. Think about last, well, two years ago now. Think about how Trump outperformed how many Senate races were lost, like in Nevada, where Trump squeaked out a victory. How Republicans consistently underperformed Trump. That’s the baseline of the Republican Party. Republicans are not liked. The Republicans are not liked. Republicans underperformed in 2022. They lost. They lost to a guy in Fetterman who, during a debate said, hi, good night, everyone. People were like, we’d rather have Uncle Fester who can’t string a sentence together than Dr. Oz. Oh, by the way, Dr. Oz was the Trump guy. So if you look at, and I’m just going to, I’ve just picked four kind of swingy type of states. There’s going to be a whole bunch of them by the time we get to November. And we don’t even know the nominees in a bunch of these states, but I just picked four. It’s 53, 47 right now in the Senate, 50/50 a tie. Vance could still break the tie in favor of the Republicans. So you got to get four if you’re the Democrats. I just picked four. There’s going to be a whole bunch in a few months. But I just picked the four that I know of right now. Roy Cooper is the Democrat in North Carolina. North Carolina has had Republican senators for a long time now. It had flipped over time under Obama to a Republican state after years of being kind of a Democrat state. Roy Cooper is the Democrat governor of North Carolina. He is beating the brakes off of the Trump backed challenger for Senate. He’s going to win overwhelmingly. This guy is so far down. The Trump guy, I think he was the head of the Republican Party, is the guy who’s running? I saw a report the other day that said the Republicans are going to have to spend $75 million in North Carolina just to make it respectable. It’s over. Just throw that one off the board. There’s one. And I know a thing or two about North Carolina politics. Roy Cooper’s been around forever. He’s going to smoke this guy. And what happened? Republicans had that as a reliable seat. Thom Tillis was the senator. Not saying he’s great. Not saying he’s awesome. I’m saying if you’re the all Republican through and through team and Trump hates Tillis until he’s like, I’m out of here. Smooch my butt cheeks. Okay, there’s one. Throw it away. In Maine, Plattner, who was supposed to be in a contested primary, and he was beating the brakes off the Democrat governor of Maine. So she’s out of the race. He’s going to be the nominee. The polls out right now have him smoking Susan Collins in Maine. He’s up like 10 or 11 points. Susan Collins probably going down. There’s two. Texas. And we’ll talk about this here in just a minute. Because Trump did it again. He endorsed this Ken Paxton lunatic weirdo idiot. No, I’ll do it now. I’m going to read the resume of the guy Trump endorsed yesterday in Texas. And look, John Cornyn is a squirrel, too. But I’m not operating from the standpoint of, hey, all Republicans all the time to help Trump. That’s what the Republican primary voters about, right? What do we do to help Trump? Here’s the resume. Time magazine went through Ken Paxton’s resume yesterday. So if you guys aren’t familiar, there’s a runoff in Texas. John Cornyn is the incumbent. He’s, you know, traditional establishment. He’s been very good to Trump. He’s been very subservient to Trump on almost everything, on almost everything. Like I guarantee you, if you looked at Paxton’s or Cornyn’s voting record, it’s like 95% what Trump wants. But it wasn’t 100. Trump endorsed Ken Paxton. Ken Paxton is the attorney general in Texas right now. And Trump took an endorsement matters because an endorsement is saying, vote for them. Vote for this person. It’s not staying out of it. It’s not I’ll deal with whoever the nominee is. I’ll support whoever the nominee is. Trump’s weighing in. He’s telling people who he wants to run with. Here’s, according to Time, Ken Paxton’s record in his personal existence. And you tell me if you think, wow, that’s awesome. Trump endorsed this guy because he has a choice. In 2015, Paxton was indicted over accusations of defrauding investors. The legal saga went on for nine years. In 2024, Paxton struck a deal with prosecutors in which he agreed to repay almost $300,000 in restitution and complete 100 hours of community service in exchange for them dropping the charges. Okay, there’s one. Defrauded investors, 300 grand in restitution, 100 hours of community service. That’s the first thing on Paxton. Think that’ll show up in ads? I think that’s going to not get put all over the state. By the way, Allred, the guy he’s running against, is the golden boy for the Democrats and the media. They are going to put everything into getting that dude elected. In 2020, while this case I just referenced was still playing out, still going on, Paxton was also accused by eight members of his senior staff of taking bribes from a real estate developer and abusing his office. The result of that, The Age reported this to the FBI, which resulted in them suing. Now keep in mind, in 2020, that was the Trump administration. That was the Trump FBI. 2020. Can’t blame that on Biden. Paxton, they reported the FBI, they launched an investigation. Paxton later fired four of these whistleblowers, which resulted in them suing on claims of retaliation and being awarded $6.6 million. The FBI investigation, along with whistleblower lawsuits, prompted the Texas State House, which are Republicans, can’t blame that on Biden or the Democrats either, to impeach Paxton on 20 articles in 2023. Now, the Senate, as often happens, didn’t follow through because of the high standard of conviction. So you’ve got the guy defrauding investors to paying, he had to pay back $300,000 in restitution, according to Time, and complete 100 hours of community service. He was impeached on 20 articles of allegedly taking bribes from a real estate developer. Oh, and then there’s more with the real estate developer. Think that, by the way. So think both of those aren’t going to show up in ads all over the state. By the way, Texas, it’s not a red. I mean, it’s red to an extent, but it certainly can and has in the past gone Democrat. The impeachment prosecutor in Paxton’s impeachment trial alleged that the real estate developer who allegedly bribed Paxton, who Paxton was married at the time, hired Paxton’s girlfriend so that the two could meet in secret in Austin. Oh, by the way, Paxton’s wife, she was a member of the Senate while this was going on and has since filed for divorce. That’s the guy that Trump was just like, let me endorse that. Because Cornyn didn’t vote with him 100% of the time. Not because of some liberal crap Cornyn did, which he’s done a lot of it. Cornyn has been there a long time. No, Trump’s not mad about that. Trump’s okay with people being there a long time and siding with the Democrats because he loves Lindsey Graham. And Trump said it in his endorsement. Well, Cornyn didn’t vote with me 100% of the time. He did it a lot, but not 100% of the time. So now Trump’s endorsed this idiot Paxton. And that’s going to put the Senate race in Texas in play, which public opinion polling shows if it’s Colin Allred versus Paxton right now, without even knowing if Paxton’s the guy or not, it’s a toss up. It’s, they’re statistically tied before any of the media gets ahold of Paxton. Okay, that’s three potentially.

Senate Races in Texas, Ohio, Maine, and North Carolina Raise New Alarm for Republicans

And in Ohio. Where the Trump guy is running for Senate, Sherrod Brown is running for Senate again. He was the popular long term Democrat. He got beat by Vance in 22. He’s back. And that public opinion polling on that within the margin of error, as is the governor’s race in which it’s Ramaswamy, the Trump guy. And Ohio’s a deep red state. The fact that you have public polling showing the governor and Senators races are statistical ties doesn’t mean that the Democrats are going to win, but they’d be like it happening in Indiana. Ohio is basically as red as Indiana. I just picked four states, guys. This is the public responding to the candidates that Republicans are putting forward because the absolute loyalty to Trump is all that’s mattering in the Republican primaries right now. And you got to lose four, you lose four, you lose the Senate. I don’t, even with the gerrymandering, most people don’t think there’s any way the Republicans can keep the House. Just if you just look at all historical data, you look at all the public opinion polling and you merge those two things together. And I just think that’s, it’s fascinating that we’re doing victory laps over the defeat of Thomas Massie. Why? Well, because he didn’t do what Trump wanted. But what if what Trump wanted him to do was spend more money, grow the debt, not tell the truth about Epstein, have unlimited ability of Trump to do whatever he wants to do without any sort of congressional oversight? That’s what we’re celebrating. We defeated. That’s what we’re happy is gone. A guy who was all about independence and transparency and accountability and not adding to our $39 trillion national debt. So it begs the question, what is the Republican Party now? What is the Republican Party? What are they all about? What is winning to the Republican Party? I keep hearing about winning. And I look at our national debt, and it’s $20 trillion higher than when Trump took office the first time. Do you guys realize that? It’s $20 trillion higher than when Trump took office? Now Biden’s in there for four of those years, so he’s certainly a part of the stew. But it isn’t like Trump did all this stuff. And then Biden was and he’s like, well, that old bag’s out of there. Let’s stop spending the money. First thing Trump did was pass a bill that added 5 trillion to the debt. Inflation is totally out of control. Gas prices are totally out of control. Is that winning? What is winning? And when are the Republicans going to say, the Republican primary voter, hey, this guy’s been in charge of all of this. Maybe we got to stop and go, hey, we got to have some checks and balances here. And so my question then becomes, if we look at all historical data, also historical data in the sense of how Republicans do when Trump is not on the ballot. And if the Republicans lose this fall, and by lose, I will say House and Senate. Do we then move on to some other version of winning? What are we doing here? I don’t recognize what’s going on right now. Do you guys? Do you get it? Do you like it? I want Trump to succeed. I want our country to succeed. I want food to be affordable. I want my money to have meaning. I want people to be able to prosper and grow their businesses, to afford to get to work and take their kids to daycare. I want policies that will make that happen. It’s hard to play victim when you’re in charge of everything. So after last night and watching the victory laps of the end of Thomas Massie, that’s the question I’m pondering. What is the Republican Party? What do they stand for?