The Trump campaign and its robotic minions are energetically rigging the deck against any serious Republican primary challenge in 2020. These moves show evidence of a wannabe political strongman who fears he may not really be so strong within his party.

The first action, entirely unprecedented and also unwise for the long-term health of the Republican Party, is a new political-organization plan that will merge the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee into a single entity. The second one, not yet a final decision, involves the South Carolina Republican Party deciding to scrap its influential presidential primary in what this publication has described as “a move to protect President Trump from any primary challengers.”

Both moves are (or would be) misguided, but the second decision, if it happens, would be mind-boggling. During the past 40 years, the South Carolina primary has established a reputation as the political kingmaker for Republicans. With only one exception, the GOP winner of that primary has always gone on to win the party’s presidential nomination. (In the one exception, eventual nominee Mitt Romney finished runner-up in the state to Newt Gingrich in 2012; but as Gingrich wasn’t seen as his closest challenger — Rick Santorum was — and because Romney at least finished second, he got a public relations boost by proving he could compete in the Deep South.) The usual scenario is for one candidate to win Iowa, another to win New Hampshire, and for South Carolina then to determine which of those two will actually be the nominee.

For South Carolina to give up this role, and all the attention and clout (and advertising dollars) it attracts for the state, would be monumentally foolish. This is especially true when two of its own, United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott, are thought to be presidential contenders themselves if Trump for some reason doesn’t make the race.

“We’ll end up doing what’s in the president’s best interest,” said state party chairman Drew McKissick. But until there actually is a nominee and until the president is clearly running, that shouldn’t be the state party’s concern. Its focus should be on doing what’s best for the South Carolina and the state’s GOP, not what’s best for the president.

The national party’s decision, meanwhile, is similarly self-abnegating. For the RNC to allow itself to be subsumed entirely under a president’s aegis is to for it to lose any sense that its mission is to help Republican candidates and activists across the country, not just the president.

Furthermore, it’s completely unfair. It entirely rigs the nomination contest against any potential challengers to Trump. That’s the sort of Washington-insider baseball Trump claimed to be running against. But now that Trump is the “establishment,” he is using the Establishment to stack the deck. How can any challenger expect fair treatment by the RNC — which is the arbiter of its own nomination process — if the RNC is directly part and parcel of the Trump campaign?

Furthermore, just as in South Carolina, the RNC faces a real conundrum if Trump for some reason doesn’t make the race after all. If the Trump campaign and the RNC are not just close allies, but organizationally one entity, then it could be a major and self-hobbling process to unwind that arrangement if Trump drops out. The organizational confusion might make it harder for the eventual nominee to beat the Democrats in the fall.

If Team Trump were really confident, it wouldn’t tilt the playing field so obviously in his favor. These actions indicate its fears of what might happen in a fair and even contest.