President Donald J. Trump’s use of the primary to remove his opponents from political office was singularly successful this past primary season. In the past, the tactic was not always successful. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, much to his later chagrin, attempted the same tactic in 1938 to remove conservative Southern Democrats who began to oppose what they viewed as the New Deal’s encroachment upon states’ rights. Prominent among this group was Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland, a close ally of Virginia Senators Carter Glass and Harry Byrd, whose removal Roosevelt so desired that he actively campaigned against him in the state. The strategy backfired gloriously. The rural districts turned out for Tydings in the primary; Tydings went on to win every Maryland county in the general election, a feat that has never been repeated by a Democrat in Maryland, and all but one of the Roosevelt targeted Southern Democrats won their primaries. The story circulates in Washington D. C. to this day that after the election of 1938, Byrd, Glass, and Tydings visited Roosevelt in the Oval Office and informed him that the New Deal was over.
President Roosevelt was a far more powerful and influential president than Donald J. Trump. He helped construct one of the broadest and deepest political coalitions that sustained Democrat electoral and legislative success for four decades. He had his enemies, but he effectively marginalized them, the Republicans were so overwhelmed by the Roosevelt juggernaut they were derisively referred to as the “Me Too!” party, only the Southern Democrats in his own party offered any effective opposition. Donald Trump’s coalition is much less broad and deep, it shows signs of division just a little more than a year into his presidency as two distinct wings are emerging in the coalition, MAGA who are the forever Trump loyalists and an America First wing disillusioned with what they view as Trump’s betrayal of his campaign promises. How then has Trump succeeded where Rossevelt failed?
Congressman Thomas Massie’s loss in the fourth congressional district primary in Kentucky reveals some of these reasons. In the 1930s, powerful and autonomous state political machines often wielded the most influence in party politics and primary elections. That influence has now shifted to the national party committees and their power to raise funds and distribute these to favored candidates. Additionally, Newt Gingrich, then minority leader of the Republican party in the House, successfully nationalized the midterm elections of 1994 with the Contract on America. As a result of funding and political branding, key primary races began to lose their local character. Massie faced an uphill funding battle as 16 million dollars of out of state money poured into Kentucky was used to advantageous effect to turn out voters in the baby boomer demographic most attached to Trump. In 1938, Rossevelt attempted to make the New Deal the primary issue in the Southern primaries and failed, Trump has made personal loyalty to himself the chief issue in the primaries in which he actively campaigned and has enjoyed a string of important successes. Popular as he was, Rossevelt was perceived as a meddling outsider by many Maryland Democrats, the nationalization of today’s local and state politics makes such a perspective antiquated. Trump’s demand for absolute personal loyalty from Republicans allowed him to paint such disparate figures as Massie, Senator John Cornyn, and Senator Bill Cassidy as RINOs, losers, and the worst possible members of Congress in the nation’s history. In Massie’s case, this mischaracterization was rich as he voted with the administration more than 90% of the time. Trump has absorbed a lesson from the Left, the personal is political, as former and current stalwart allies, former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Representative Lauren Boebert, Tucker Carlson, and others have found out.
Trump’s team cooperated in portraying Senators Cornyn and Cassidy as insiders, members of a political establishment that many American voters view as corrupt. The depiction was accurate, but Massie had a different vulnerability. Danile McCarthy in separate pieces in the Compact, the Spectator, and the American Conservative opined that Massie’s political downfall was Massie’s fault (though it may be a tad early to write the obituary for Massie’s political career). Massie did not play ball, he did not use his vote to wring concessions on the Big Beautiful Bill, and he did not align with Republican primary voters on issues such as the deficit, Israel, and the Epstein files. There is merit to McCarthy’s analysis, but it does not go nearly far enough. The issue is not Republican primary voters, but which Republican primary voters. Generational analysis suggests that Massie did very well among Gen Z, Millennial, and even Gen X voters, but was smoked by the Baby Boomers who turned out in impressive numbers. Anecdotal evidence from election day interviews suggests that many of these Boomer voters cast their vote for Massie’s opponent based upon misinformation, an example being that Massie voted for Trump’s impeachment, or intense personal loyalty to Trump. It seems odd that McCarthy would dismiss the role of money in this election as it is crucial in branding, getting one’s messaging in front of people, and funding an effective campaign and ground game. Massie’s opponents knew which demographic to target and with what message, and they did their work well.
McCarthy’s focus on Massie’s stand on the issues provides us with more fertile ground for analysis. Rossevelt’s opponents on the 1938 primary were all establishment men. Both Massie’s friends and his enemies will agree that Massie is not. Massie is a political maverick and his defeat echoes that of American history’s most famous and formidable political maverick, John Randolph of Roanoke. Of course, the two men can hardly be any more different. Massie is a genial and happy warrior; Randolph was mercurial, aristocratic, and ardent in his loves and hates. Massie is an able parliamentarian, at times Randolph was the master of the House of Representatives and the Senate, tying Jefferson’s second administration into knots and bringing the John Quincy Adams administration to its knees during his time in the Senate. As members of Congress, both were animated primarily by principle and thus able to make alliances across the aisle, Massie on the release of the Epstein files and Randolph on his opposition to the War of 1812. Be they gadflies, or if one prefers the conscience of the Congress, they most often lost their political battles. Randolph went down to defeat in the election of 1812 opposing a war that was, for a brief time, popular in Virginia. Massie went down to defeat because he opposed on a few occasions a president wildly popular with the demographic who turns out to vote in the largest numbers in Republican primaries.
Though 1812, 1938, and the present times are unalike in so many ways, there are some interesting lessons to be drawn from the events discussed above. First, men of principle do not often fare well in politics, they walk a lonely road, and one suspects that if the Republicans had spent enough money and turned out enough voters that their attempts to “primary” Congressmen Ron Paul of Texas and Walter Jones of North Carolina back in the day may have met with success. Perhaps the lesson of 1938 was that powerful Senators with the backing of well-oiled state machines could defy a popular and powerful president, but the nationalization of elections and campaign funding has made such things a historical curiosity. While Mr. Trump may enjoy his “scalp dance” around the primary pole, the generational numbers may be cause for concern for Republicans able to look down the road. Support for fiscal irresponsibility, a blank check for Israel, and the winking at the crimes of the Epstein class may play well enough with the older set of Always Trumpers, it sits not well with the younger generations of Republican voters. Indeed, political conflict between the generations may become the defining trait of American politics in the next decade.
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