Will It Be a Majority Party or a Trump Party?

Six years ago, even though the political environment favored Democrats and the party out of power successfully capitalized on its advantages in House races, the U.S. Senate told a slightly different story. Democrats struggled to navigate a rugged landscape in which the party was forced to defend ten incumbents in states Donald Trump took in 2016. Although Democratic candidates won an open seat in Arizona and ousted Republican senator Dean Heller in Nevada, the party lost seats in Florida, Indiana, Missouri, and North Dakota, yielding a 53-seat majority to the GOP.

That same terrain is up for grabs again this year, and the seats Republicans reclaimed from Democrats in 2018 are now firmly in the Republican Party’s camp. As such, the GOP is expanding its list of targeted Senate races. Republicans are eyeing potential pickup opportunities in Ohio and Montana. With the benefit of headwinds, Republicans could retake the seat being vacated by Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema or unseat Jacky Rosen in Nevada. Given even more good fortune, Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey, Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin, or the open seat in Michigan could also fall into the GOP’s camp. But if the final outcome of 2024’s Senate elections ends up where the (admittedly scant) polling is at the moment, Republicans would fight Democrats to a 50/50 draw in the Senate, with control of the chamber going to the party of the next vice president.

That’s not the most reassuring set of circumstances — or, rather, it shouldn’t be. Republicans would be wise to hedge against unforeseen developments or a candidate’s underperformance by broadening the aperture as much as resources allow and letting the party’s nominees run their respective races. These imperatives run counter to the demands on the GOP in the age of Trump.

When it comes to policy, Republican down-ballot candidates can strike out in almost any independent direction they like, but that latitude does not extend to the personality at the top of the GOP ticket. The Republican Party’s shot callers have thus foolishly decided to excommunicate Maryland’s popular former governor and U.S. Senate candidate, Larry Hogan, even though he represents a once-in-a-generation chance to flip a seat in one of the bluest states in the nation.

“You just ended your campaign,” said Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita to Hogan immediately preceding last week’s guilty verdicts. The remarks that set LaCivita off were anodyne enough. “Regardless of the result, I urge all Americans to respect the verdict and the legal process,” he wrote, decrying the “toxic partisanship” that had led some to denounce not just the outcome of the Trump trial but the fundaments of American jurisprudence. Hogan’s sin was his failure to mimic and, therefore, validate the charged emotional state in which Republicans found themselves.

“We must reaffirm what has made this nation great: the rule of law,” Hogan continued. But the former president’s defenders weren’t in the market for banalities in deference to high principle. The problem for Republicans who promote and enforce party discipline on Trump’s personal indiscretions and the legal woes that have accompanied them is that Hogan’s voters almost certainly are.

It should come as no surprise that Donald Trump is profoundly unpopular in Maryland. It may not be much of a feat, but the Republican Senate candidate consistently outpolls the former president in the state Hogan governed for two consecutive terms. Voters tend to evaluate candidates for federal office differently than they would state-level candidates, and there’s no guarantee that Hogan’s popularity as governor translates into support for his Senate candidacy. But he is still the GOP’s best hope for a pickup in unlikely territory. Even if Hogan’s refusal to toe the party line on Trump’s trials irritates the former president’s image-makers, they would be wise to avoid exacerbating tensions that could depress Maryland’s small population of Republican voters.

LaCivita’s denunciation wasn’t a momentary lapse fueled by pique. It was just the opening salvo. In a CNN appearance this weekend, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump attempted to read the party’s senatorial nominee out of the GOP — indeed, out of American public life entirely.

“I don’t support what he just said there,” Lara Trump said of Hogan’s calls for restraint in advance of last week’s verdicts. “He doesn’t deserve the respect of anyone in the Republican Party at this point. And quite frankly, anybody in America.” When asked if the GOP’s national committees were prepared to “cede” the Maryland seat to Democrats just to stick it to Larry Hogan, Trump said that Republicans “of course want to win.” And yet she would not commit to diverting resources to Hogan’s campaign. “What I can tell you, as the Republican Party co-chair, I think he should never have said something like that.”

For all the successes Donald Trump’s faction has enjoyed in homogenizing the GOP, it will always have as part of its coalition members who differ with the majority — particularly on issues as contentious and polarizing as the former president’s legal dramas. This is a big country, and parties that seek national majorities will contain multitudes. If Larry Hogan wins his race, he might not be the most reliable vote for the Republican Senate majority, but he would be a more reliably Republican vote than Prince George’s County executive Angela Alsobrooks. This shouldn’t be a tough call.

If the Republican Party cannot brook dissent within its ranks, it will marginalize its own majority makers. Among those for whom politics is entertainment or a vehicle to express cultural resentments, that’s not a problem. But for Republican voters who actually want to see their policy preferences advanced by their representatives, the brushback pitches the national GOP is firing off at its own candidate do them no favors. Internecine warfare may make for some lively prime-time cable news segments, but it’s no way to run a national party.