Republicans Face A “Bitter And Bruising” Primary Season As GOP Senate Candidates Race To Align With Trump

“Looming Fights” Are A “Less-Than-Ideal Prospect” For A Struggling Republican Party Defined By Deep Internal Divisions

New reporting from The Hill highlights the growing fiasco that Republicans have found themselves in as “Trump’s pledge to line up an army of loyalists to run in the 2022 midterm elections is beginning to take shape.” Republican candidates across the map are racing to align with Trump’s most loyal voters and win the former president’s support, creating “looming fights” and raising “the possibility of a bitter and bruising primary season for Republicans.”

Despite public and private calls from top Republicans to “abandon, or at least moderate, Trump’s vision,” emerging GOP candidates in Senate battlegrounds “are touting themselves as acolytes of the former president.” The messy primary fights are likely to exacerbate the “deep internal and ideological divisions” already threatening to tear the party apart. In addition to brewing primary battles, Trump’s promise to campaign against incumbent Senators that he does not feel were sufficiently loyal to him threatens to destabilize the party further. The impending fights are “a less-than-ideal prospect” for Republicans desperately trying to recuperate after losing control of the Senate last cycle.

The Hill: Trump allies line up ahead of potentially bruising primaries

• Former President Trump’s pledge to line up an army of loyalists to run in the 2022 midterm elections is beginning to take shape.

• The campaigns by hard-right politicians offer Trump perhaps his best chance to cement his grip on the Republican Party in his post-presidential life. But it is also likely to do little to unify a party that has wrestled with deep internal and ideological divisions since losing the White House and its Senate majority in recent months.

• Trump has reemerged on the political scene in recent weeks as he seeks to ensure that the party he dominated over the past four years remains firmly in his corner. He has vowed political revenge on Republicans whom he sees as insufficiently loyal and is eyeing the 2022 midterms as an opportunity to install loyalists in Congress and oust those who have crossed him.

• While some Republicans have privately — and in some cases publicly — called for the GOP to abandon, or at least moderate, Trump’s vision for the party, operatives and candidates are acutely aware of his outsize popularity among the GOP’s most conservative voters and see his endorsement as their ticket to victory.

• The looming fights for Trump’s endorsement raise the possibility of a bitter and bruising primary season for Republicans, a less-than-ideal prospect for the party as it looks to recapture control of both the Senate and the House next year.

• There are similar fights for Trump’s support cropping up in states like Ohio, where former state Treasurer Josh Mandel and former Ohio GOP Chairwoman Jane Timken are vying for Trump’s support in the Republican primary to replace retiring Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio).

• Trump has also spoken in recent weeks to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who is weighing whether to seek a third term next year. One Republican source said that Trump wants Johnson to run for reelection, seeing him as his best hope for keeping at least one of Wisconsin’s Senate seats in friendly hands.

• But there are still questions about the former president’s involvement in other states where Republicans are hoping to hold on to Senate seats.

• Trump has vowed to campaign against Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who was one of seven GOP senators to vote to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial last month.

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