Why the Cult of Trump's search for apostates to purge will never end

By Paul Waldman
June 13 at 1:19 PM

“We are in a strange place,” Republican Sen. Bob Corker said today. “It’s almost, it’s becoming a cultish thing, isn’t it? It’s not a good place for any party to end up with a cult-like situation as it relates to a president that happens to be of, purportedly, of the same party.”

People like Corker or his colleague Jeff Flake — both of whom opted to retire when faced with at least the possibility that their occasional criticisms of President Trump could subject them to a successful primary challenge from a Trump loyalist — have come to believe that their party has been twisted into a cult of personality. But the truth is that what we’re seeing now is just a new manifestation of forces and tendencies that have been present in the GOP for some time.

Yesterday’s primaries produced at least one surprising result, as Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina was defeated by Katie Arrington, who had made Sanford’s insufficient loyalty to Trump a campaign issue. At 4:12 pm on primary day, Trump endorsed Arrington via a tweet, saying that “Mark Sanford has been very unhelpful to me in my campaign to MAGA. He is MIA and nothing but trouble.” In her victory speech, Arrington declared that “We are the party of President Donald J. Trump” (the mark of the most fervent Trump loyalists is that for some reason when speaking the president’s name they reverentially use his middle initial). But the truth is that Mark Sanford has been perfectly helpful to Trump, if you were judging by his support for the president’s policies. He voted with the president 73 percent of the time, according to 538.com, which is solid if not perfect. The problem, though, is that from the beginning he has been willing to criticize Trump for things like his rampant dishonesty. Arrington made that the centerpiece of her campaign. “Mark Sanford has made it his career to use taxpayer dollars to go on CNN and criticize the president,” she said at one point. That will not stand, and he had to be purged.

Some people have used measures of vote alignment, like Corker’s 86 percent agreement with Trump and Flake’s 85 percent agreement — to charge that these politicians are hypocrites or cowards, who will offer some meek reproach of the president but not stand up to him when it counts. That criticism is misconceived, however, because there’s nothing particularly Trumpian about the legislation they vote on. Agreeing with Trump on a bill just means you’re voting for some Republican priority, one which Trump probably knows barely anything about. These are all conservative Republicans, so of course they’re going to vote for most of that legislation.

Republican primary voters don’t really care about how their representatives voted, because the measure of fealty to the cause has shifted. A few years ago, it was how vigorous you were in opposing Barack Obama. Did you support shutting down the government? Was your criticism of him sufficiently angry and personal? If a policy issue came up in those contests, it was likely to be immigration, which was really about tribal loyalty. If you weren’t devoted enough to keeping out foreigners (especially the non-white ones), then you could lose your seat, as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor found out in 2014.

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