Ashley Hinson campaigns last month. (Charlie Niebergall/Getty)
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One of the defining features of politics in this era is the iron grip Donald Trump has on the Republican Party.
It’s fair to say that no modern president has enjoyed this kind of near-unanimity of support from his party for so long. With only occasional exceptions, Republican politicians do not criticize him, they do not question him, and they do not express doubts in public about him.
This loyalty did not emerge organically; it took time for Trump to create it, mostly through fear. Every GOP officeholder knows that dissent may be met with ostracism, vicious personal insults, and a primary challenge. No backbench congressman wants to find themselves suddenly famous because the president has singled them out for an attack on Truth Social.
Consequently, the rational strategy for Republicans hoping to survive — and survival is the most fundamental goal for any politician — has been to stay by Trump’s side.
But with just six weeks to go before Election Day, that edifice of loyalty has begun to crumble. Multiple Republican candidates — even some who not long ago donned red MAGA hats — have decided that their survival calculation has been flipped upside-down, and now the riskiest move isn’t to break from Trump; the riskiest move is to stick with him unequivocally...
