Among the political reading and podcasts, I follow there has been a debate concerning if Trump is losing his grip upon the Republican party. For those assessing the environment and concluding that his influence is waning a key item of evidence is that Trump endorsed candidates are doing poorly in the GOP primaries and his win/loss record when the primaries are completed may be negative.

I think these people are wish-casting, seeing the outcomes as indicative of a political environment that want to be true not the reality that is before them.

Yes, many, perhaps even most, Trump endorsed candidates in the current Republican primaries are faring poorly and may be likely to lose. But they are not losing to candidates that repudiate Trump’s administrations, who plainly and cleanly recognize that the 2020 election was fair, free of any result altering fraud or corruption. The winning candidates from coast to coast all repeat the core conspiracy-ridden Trump approved accounts of the election and the mythical fraud. None stand athwart the conservative tide and shout STOP! None endorse Cheney and her election. They are all, with or without his endorsement, Trump’s people.

But if Trump backs losers, puts his finger on the scale and it matters not, doesn’t that prove his influence is not that great?

Here is rule one for Trump and politics, ignore it at your peril.

Objective reality does not matter to Trump and his political fortunes.

Hundreds of thousands dead from a pandemic he denied and dismissed? Inconsequential.

Massive Tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy when he campaigned otherwise? Meaningless.

Disparaging and disrupting alliances in favor of geopolitical enemies? Irrelevant.

Issuing directives against LGBTQ when he had promised to be their best friend? Trivial

What Trump does, as long as it does not directly contradict a white supremist narrative, is without any weight or meaning. Trump’s political power is not generated by policy, principle, position, or actions but solely from emotion. And that emotion is anger. Anger at the ‘other,’ anger at the ‘elite,’ anger at the world not catering to his voters’ whims. So what if Mandel wins the primary in Ohio over Vance, they are both stoking the anger, they are both bending the knee to the Orange God-King, they are both Trump’s men and he wins if either does.