Two anti-establishment GOP candidates “trumped” their opponents on Tuesday, with Corey Stewart winning the Senate primary in Virginia and Katie Arrington defeating Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., in the primary for his House seat, hours after the president endorsed her with a tweet bashing Sanford.
In his early reaction to the results, Nate Silver wrote, “In contrast to last week’s results — which were pretty good for the GOP ‘establishment’ — the two most interesting outcomes of the evening featured problems for traditional Republicans and underscored the degree to which the GOP has become Trump’s party.”
The chatter after other Tuesdays this spring, as Silver points out, has been about how party-preferred candidates can prevail in primaries. But for every Don Blankenship, there seems to be a Roy Moore.
One thing that just about every successful GOP candidate this cycle has had in common is a willingness to express support for Trump, even if it seems questionable (see: Mitt Romney). But even if Republican support for Trump is high, there’s not enough evidence to support blanket assessments that a candidate like Stewart is the flavor of the moment for GOP voters nationwide. And given the intensity of Sanford’s criticism of Trump, that he managed to win 46 percent of the vote anyway, losing by less than 3,000 ballots, is also worth noting.
We’ll know more as primary season continues to unfold this summer, but as of right now, the mixed messages make it hard to draw clear conclusions about the direction of the GOP, other than the predictable power of voters’ demand that candidates support the Republican president.
