Forget the doomsday predictions about what President Trump’s cuts might do — his “Big Beautiful Bill” has already notched its first major casualty: Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican.
Tillis, who couldn’t support a bill that would kick an estimated 660,000 North Carolinians off Medicaid, told reporters: “I respect President Trump, I support the majority of his agenda, but I don’t bow to anybody when the people of North Carolina are at risk.”
Noble words. Touching, really. Like watching a man insist on reciting the Pledge of Allegiance while standing in front of a firing squad.
Tillis’ rare moment of spine predictably earned him a not-so-veiled threat from Trump: support the bill or enjoy your upcoming primary challenge.
So, in a move that felt less like defiance and more like weary resignation, Tillis announced he wouldn’t be seeking reelection. “You can’t fire me, I quit,” he essentially said — the eternal battle cry of the soon-to-be-unemployed.
There’s a reason Trump’s threats are taken seriously. Indeed, while Tillis was channeling Johnny Paycheck’s “Take This Job and Shove It,” a Trump-aligned organization — MAGA Kentucky PAC — was launching a $1-million ad campaign against another traitor: Rep. Thomas Massie. Massie was one of only two House Republicans who had the gall (or perhaps the intellectual consistency) to oppose the bill.
Among Massie’s concerns is the impact the bill would have on the national debt: “We are not rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” the colorful gadfly warned on the House floor. “We’re putting coal in the boiler and setting a course for the iceberg.”
Unlike Tillis, Massie is less bleeding-heart establishment type, and more libertarian monk. He’s survived Trump’s wrath before (which puts him in a very elite club with Georgia’s Republican governor and secretary of state) and seems weirdly unbothered by the fragging fire.
That, of course, is rare.
Just ask Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican who has increasingly clashed with Trump over a variety of issues. He’s announced his retirement too.
This is a pattern. The streets are littered with the political remains of Republicans who dared to deviate from Trump’s whims. Some names are familiar. Liz Cheney. Adam Kinzinger. Jeff Flake. Bob Corker. Mitt Romney. Others have receded in our memory. Mike Gallagher. Justin Amash. Denver Riggleman. Mark Sanford. Will Hurd.
Some of them retired (see Ken Buck). Some were retired (see Peter Meijer).
Some who formerly opposed Trump have abandoned their principles and ambitions to be absorbed into the Borg.
Remember Marco Rubio, who once warned that Trump couldn’t be trusted with the nuclear codes? As secretary of State, he’s now one of the nodding bobbleheads. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) went from calling Trump “a race-baiting xenophobic religious bigot” to fighting for the honor of Trump’s golf handicap. Nancy Mace and Elise Stefanik? They practically had a public conversion experience.
The road to MAGA runs through the Valley of Self-Abasement.
This process of purging and converting has been going on for a decade now. The few contrarian voices Trump faced in his first term — then-Speaker Paul D. Ryan, then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and various other grownups in the room (a.k.a., “the deep state”) — have all drifted into irrelevance or retirement.
Ryan has been replaced by Mike Johnson, who knows exactly who’s boss. McConnell, for his part, is still technically around. But his influence has been steadily eclipsed by Trump’s cult of personality.
And here’s the real kicker for committed conservatives: Trump doesn’t actually care if you’re opposing him because he’s too conservative or not conservative enough. Nor does he care if these apostates are replaced by Trumpier loyalists or by liberal Democrats.
Ideological consistency was never the point. What matters to him is obedience. What matters is domination. He has figured out that when it comes to wielding power, it’s better to be entirely in charge of one political party than broadly popular with the electorate.
If Flake, the Republican senator from Arizona, had to be replaced by Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, so be it. If Tillis’ seat ends up in the hands of a Democrat (as might well happen), that’s also fine by Trump — as long as no future Republican gets the idea that they can defy Dear Leader and live to tell the tale.
These tradeoffs aren’t hypothetical. Indeed, almost immediately after Bacon announced his retirement the other week, the Cook Political Report downgraded his Nebraska seat from “Toss Up” to “Lean Democrat.”
Doesn’t matter to the president. Either way, another domino falls. This isn’t about growing the party. It’s about purifying it — boiling it down into a smaller, angrier and more compliant organism.
Trump doesn’t want a majority. He wants a mob.
And so the culling continues. Not with gulags or guillotines, but with social media threats and primaries for anyone who doesn’t go along with the program.
As political scientist Larry Sabato so eloquently put it, “Any Republican who votes against the Big Beautiful Bill better have a clear view of the Big Beautiful EXIT door.”
Welcome to the party of Trump. Where loyalty is mandatory, courage is crushed and “early retirement” is the modern equivalent of a cyanide capsule.
You’re either on the bus, or you’re thrown under it.
Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”
The post Contributor: How Trump is purging and purifying the GOP appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
