Indiana shows Republicans have two choices: align with Trump or get ousted

By just about every measure, Donald Trump’s sway with US voters has slipped since he won re-election two years ago, but there’s one place where his power remains unmatched: within the Republican party.

The latest evidence of his ability to control who’s in and who’s out in the GOP came on Tuesday, when primary voters in Indiana ousted five of seven state senators who had last year defied the president’s demand to redraw the state’s congressional maps and gerrymander the state’s last two Democratic representatives out of their seats.

True to form, Trump vowed revenge, and top Indiana Republicans such as senator Jim Banks together with outside groups aligned with the White House poured millions into unseating the seven dissidents. Only one survived Tuesday’s primaries, while another’s race is too close to call, according to the Associated Press.

“Last night’s Indiana primary elections should give conservatives hope that we can remove politicians who talk like conservatives but ultimately aid the Left,” said Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, which has played a major role in shaping Trump administration policy.

“They also serve as a warning that Americans are paying attention and will not reward failure. If you campaigned as a conservative, deliver on what you were elected for or pack your bags.”

James Blair, the White House deputy chief of staff who has taken a temporary leave of absence to lead the president’s outside political operation ahead of November’s midterms, simply tweeted a meme of Russell Crowe from the 2000 hit Gladiator bellowing: “Are you not entertained?”

There won’t be much amusing about what comes next, not for the state’s beleaguered Democrats, nor for the old guard of Indiana Republicans who have long resisted the sort of nationalization of their politics that has become inescapable in the Trump era, said Michael Wolf, chair of the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics at Purdue University Fort Wayne.

When Indiana’s legislature convenes next year, “we’ll see the same map kind of trundled out and probably passed pretty quickly,” he predicted. That proposal, which passed the statehouse last year but died in the state senate thanks to the Republican revolt, would split Democrat André Carson’s Indianapolis district across four Republican-held seats, and make it even harder for Frank Mrvan, also a Democrat, to win re-election in the state’s north-west corner.