Just as Donald Trump is a natural outgrowth of decades of escalating Republican ideology, the Republican Party is now inseparable from Donald Trump. For all the talk of Brave, Independent Voices of Dissent in the Senate, Jeff Flake votes with the president 81 percent of the time. Susan Collins is with him 77 percent. Bob Corker, who's lamented that Republicans are in a "cult-like situation" with Trump, votes with him 84 percent of the time. Among the rank-and-file, his approval rating is currently 86 percent—compared to 38 percent of the general public. Perhaps more importantly, whatever the president says seems to become the truth for a third of the American public. This is particularly useful because what he says is rarely the truth as reflected in observable reality.

On the flip side, though, there seems to be genuine anxiety among some in the party apparatus about the 2020 campaign. First of all, the guy is in some legal trouble. Trump University and the Trump Foundation have already been shut down for illegal activity. The Trump campaign, transition, inaugural committee, and the Trump Organization are all under investigation for...more illegal activity. The New York Times accused him outright of a decades-long scheme to commit tax fraud. Second of all, there are constant, swirling rumors that he will face a primary challenge from someone like John Kasich, who agrees with him on the vast majority of Republican policy but finds him kind of boorish.

Joe Raedle Getty Images

That second fear seems to have taken hold in the South Carolina Republican Party, who imparted to the Washington Examiner Wednesday that they may cancel their 2020 presidential primary for Trump's benefit:

Drew McKissick, chairman of the South Carolina GOP, said he doesn’t anticipate Trump would face a primary challenge and emphasized that the state party executive committee hasn’t held any formal discussions about the contest, dubbed “first in the South” and usually third on the presidential nominating calendar. But McKissick would pointedly not rule out canceling the primary, indicating that that would be his preference.

“We have complete autonomy and flexibility in either direction,” McKissick told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday. “Considering the fact that the entire party supports the president, we’ll end up doing what’s in the president’s best interest.”

Floating the idea of canceling the contest is not exactly a sure sign that "the entire party supports the president." Japan has canceled the 2020 Olympics because they've already wrapped up the gold for men's basketball. This is more likely a move to discourage any would-be challengers, because it would be difficult to get a foothold without one of the first three primary contests. Likewise, as the Examiner notes, the fear is probably not that Trump would lose the South Carolina primary, but that sustaining a primary challenge for any period of time could damage his general election campaign.

Mark Wallheiser Getty Images

The report eagerly finds there is "precedent" for this strategy, though all the examples cited are courtesy of state Republican parties in prior election cycles. It also suggests canceling the primary is a way to save money. Because what is democracy worth, anyway? After all, in today's context, this trial balloon can only be viewed as part of the Republican Party's growing disregard for—and increasingly, hostility to—the democratic process itself.

It's no longer just that Republican state legislatures have embarked on sophisticated programs of voter suppression to keep The Wrong People from voting. Or that they have so ruthlessly gerrymandered their maps to make The Wrong People's votes count for less—sometimes, as with North Carolina, targeting African-Americans "with almost surgical precision."

Now that Republicans sustained significant losses in the 2018 midterms, some state parties have set about stripping the governor's and secretary of state's offices of their powers before the Democrats who won the elections can get in. Wisconsin just succeeded in this effort to emulate North Carolina's efforts two years back, while Michigan Republicans appear to have failed. And all this is to say nothing of the fact that the only large-scale report of election fraud—a close relative of voter fraud, long the evidence-free justification for Republican voter-suppression efforts—came out of a Republican campaign in...North Carolina.

Voters participate in the South Carolina Republican primary in 2016. Sean Rayford Getty Images

So it all adds up that Republicans would be uninterested in allowing voters to directly decide who will be their 2020 nominee. (After all, they let them loose in 2016 and they picked a guy who says the quiet parts out loud!) But the South Carolina play is just part of the complete pledge of fealty to Trump heading into the next cycle, as detailed by Politico this week:

Under the plan, which has been in the works for several weeks, the Trump reelection campaign and the RNC will merge their field and fundraising programs into a joint outfit dubbed Trump Victory...The goal is to create a single, seamless organization that moves quickly, saves resources, and — perhaps most crucially — minimizes staff overlap and the kind of infighting that marked the 2016 relationship between the Trump campaign and the party. While a splintered field of Democrats fight for the nomination, Republicans expect to gain an organizational advantage.

This does actually seem like an effective strategy for Trump. Will down-ballot candidates say the same?

It’s a stark expression of Trump’s stranglehold over the Republican Party: Traditionally, a presidential reelection committee has worked in tandem with the national party committee, not subsumed it.

Trump truly has subsumed the entire party, in ideology and policy and rhetoric and style. Now everybody wants The Wall that won't work, and blatant white nationalism is on the conservative teevee. And why not? The guy has gotten it done in every way that matters to Republican donors (tax cuts for rich people and corporations, a deregulation frenzy) and The Base (constant demonization of The Other, a parade of retrograde nominees for lifetime appointments to the federal bench). That he has ushered in a cabal of grifters and wannabe oligarchs, both within and beyond his family, to smash the glass and grab everything in sight is a worthwhile tradeoff.

The Trump Clan Chip Somodevilla Getty Images

But the primary talk persists, even in Politico's piece:

There is another benefit as well: With talk of a primary challenge to Trump simmering, the act of formally tying the president’s reelection campaign to the resource-rich national party will make it only harder for would-be Republican opponents to mount a bid...



While many senior party officials recognize the potential upside of the arrangement, they also privately acknowledge the political risk of linking the party apparatus so closely to the president at a time when he’s under increasing political and legal duress.

“There are some people who choose for whatever reason to handcuff themselves to the Titanic,” said John Weaver, an adviser to Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is considering challenging Trump in the Republican primary. “Why, I have no idea.”

In the end, Trump would win the primary anyway, and the national media would probably memory-hole any damage he took—or at least equate it with whichever penny-ante scandal involving the Democratic nominee has been elevated to National Emergency.

But Republicans truly have handcuffed themselves to Trump, perhaps because they fear there is nothing else. The Republican Party has abandoned any pretense of trying to build a majority coalition to win democratic elections, instead turning to manipulation of democratic institutions—elections and voting, the judiciary—to govern with a minority coalition based around older, white Evangelicals. Now they are tied to the Big, Beautiful Personality Cult, perhaps they fear it's the cork keeping everything in the bottle.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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