First it was Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. Then it was Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. Now it is Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C.
Clashing with President Trump is the quickest way to the exits for a Republican lawmaker who represents red-state voters. This is despite the lingering movement of conservative opposition to Trump that invites these politicians to assert their opposition to a president who lacks their shared history fighting for conservative principles.
Neither Corker nor Flake even made it to their respective Republican primaries before deciding their best course of action was to retire. Sanford, a former governor, lost to a lesser known GOP primary challenger who made his criticism of Trump her main issue but did not receive any support from the president himself until an 11th hour tweet.
Sanford was a strong fiscal conservative aligned with the Freedom Caucus who survived an extramarital affair as governor that might have ended a lesser Southern Republican’s career. Flake had a similar ideological profile and managed to make it from the House to the Senate despite primary challengers who disagreed with him on immigration and his own criticism of President George W. Bush.
Corker, a businessman before serving in the Senate, was said to be a rare Capitol Hill Republican who actually understood Trump. He was rumored to be a candidate for secretary of state or even vice president.
None of them will be in Congress next year.
Recent Republican primaries have demonstrated Trump’s power over the party. Corey Stewart won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Virginia over the strenuous objections of many in the party — his less prominent main challenger did come within less than 2 points of the upset — in no small part because he embraced Trump.
Certainly, one of the main issues that doomed Del. Nick Freitas’ surprisingly strong campaign was the perception he was “Never Trump,” even with all of Stewart’s problems.
Rep. Martha Roby, R-Ala., was forced into a runoff by a recent former Democratic congressman who voted for Barack Obama for president and Nancy Pelosi for speaker. Why? Because Roby was deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump.
These are races in which Trump avoided direct involvement. Since Roy Moore’s loss of a winnable Senate seat in Alabama, the president has mainly intervened when a primary featured a flawed MAGA candidiate — one advertising their enthusiasm for Trump and his 2016 campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” — who jeopardizes Republicans’ chances of winning.
The most prominent example was when Trump exhorted West Virginia Republicans to remember Alabama and nominate someone other than Don Blankenship, who had recently done time over a deadly mining accident and was producing racist television commercials, to run against vulnerable Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.
In these cases, Trump is aligned with leadership on the outcome of the primary. The voters simply won’t listen to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., or any other leader besides Trump.
On Sanford, Trump was acting alone. Perhaps that was why he waited so long to weigh in. Or maybe he saw some late poll numbers that encouraged him. Or possibly he was simply emboldened by the summit with North Korea.
Whatever the reason, Trump acted at a time when he could not have been assigned too much blame if Sanford challenger Katie Arrington fell short. But he clearly deserves a great deal of the credit for the incumbent’s defeat.
Sanford certainly thought so over a year ago, when he told Politico he was a “dead man walking.” In that interview, Sanford decried the world of “alternative facts” that accompanied the Trump administration and seemed to accept his political fate.
“I believe in a war of ideas … and I tell the staff all the time: Look, we’re in the business of crafting and refining our arguments that are hopefully based on the truth,” he said. “Truth matters. Not hyperbole, not wild suggestion, but actual truth.”
Attitude, identity and a willingness to fight characterize the Trump-era GOP more than ideas or political philosophy. And to the extent that there is something distinctly ideological about Trump, the president’s populism and nationalism are different than Sanford’s quiet libertarianism.
Trump’s ownership of the Republican Party won’t necessarily last forever. There was a time not long ago when the Bushes defined party orthodoxy. When Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, spoke harshly at a Republican debate about the 43rd president’s decision to go to war in Iraq, he was sharply reprimanded by former New York City mayor, and current Trump laywer, Rudy Giuliani. The crowd in Sanford’s South Carolina cheered Giuliani and booed Paul.
Also on stage at a debate in South Carolina, Trump blasted the Iraq war in similar terms. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the ex-president’s brother, pushed back. Trump won the South Carolina primary, the nomination, and the presidency.
Like Sanford’s latest stint in Congress, few things in politics happen forever.
