Previously Published in The Messenger
This week’s primaries in Louisiana and Kentucky mean that the Republican Party nationally is now on notice to find a platform and rally around it.
Easier said than done, we suppose…
Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) lost his primary to an obscure, Trump-backed candidate on Tuesday night. Already one of the most-watched races of the 2026 cycle, the primary culminated on Tuesday night with Massie falling after more than a decade of service in the U.S. House.
Massie has never been one to flirt with the political left, but he’s been willing to buck his party when appropriate – a lost art nowadays. While a maverick to some degree, Massie has always been a fiscal stalwart and an enemy of the warhawk wing of the party – the same wing that essentially fueled Trump’s 2016 campaign, and the same wing he now seems hell-bent on appeasing.
Massie’s populist overtones, however, weren’t enough to save his seat. Going against the monstrous spending package of the Big Beautiful Bill, the Iran War, and forcing the vote on the Epstein Files, Massie had done more than enough to earn Trump’s umbrage.
In Louisiana, another semi-maverick Senator, Bill Cassidy (R-LA), came in a distant third over the weekend. However, Cassidy wasn’t as much of an outspoken populist as Massie was. Rather, he seemed tuned out to Trump after voting to convict him in his January 6 impeachment trial.
Both tell the same story: the GOP continues to be controlled by Donald Trump and the money that flows in from associated coffers and donors.
But Massie’s primary is the bigger wedge that we think will determine the GOP’s identity crisis in the post-Trump era.
Both parties have identity problems coming up. Democrats need to learn not to be so insufferable on the most menial, culture-war issues, while Republicans need to buck the very establishment wing of the federal government that Trump initially swore to oppose by “draining the swamp.” Democrats also need a verifiable leader, particularly one from the political center, a figurehead they currently lack. In fact, 2028 presidential primary polls show former Vice President Kamala Harris (D-CA), Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA), and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Parkchester) as the ostensible frontrunners.
If Democrats double down, they might blow a winnable election in 2028.
While the GOP doesn’t suffer from a lack of a figurehead, they seem to be suffering from a complete surrender to Trump by any means necessary. Anyone who doesn’t toe the party line can’t be trusted, even though intra-party dissension is what drives ideas and people back to the ideological middle, for the most part. Tuesday’s primary, we think, was the first turning point in a GOP after Trump. The question is, how will party bosses and the at-large electorate react when more Massie-like figures inevitably attempt to seek power?