Don’t cross the president
WASHINGTON >> Don’t cross President Donald Trump.
That’s the lesson many Republicans are drawing from Rep. Mark Sanford’s surprise defeat Tuesday in his primary election in South Carolina. The victor, state Rep. Katie Arrington, repeatedly highlighted Sanford’s criticism of the president.
The outcome is a cautionary tale for Republicans in Congress who try to work with Trump while also maintaining their independence. One wrong turn — or in Sanford’s case, many — and they could face the wrath of a president who is quick to attack detractors as enemies, even in his own party.
“That’s ultimately what the race devolved down to, which was, was I Trump enough?” Sanford told reporters on Capitol Hill.
“It’s a very tribal environment right now,” he said. “Are you for or against Trump?”
He said he hoped his defeat would not dissuade other members from speaking out against Trump. Agreeing to disagree is “a sign of health in our political system.”
Sanford is the second incumbent House Republican to lose a primary this year, though the defeat of Rep. Robert Pittenger in North Carolina came despite his staunch support for the president.
Still, Sanford is only the latest casualty in the intra-party conflict that has roiled the GOP in the Trump era. Trump is known to remember slights from lawmakers.
Rep. Martha Roby, for example, was forced into a runoff last week in Alabama after her opponents seized on her own rift with the president. In 2016, after the release of a tape in which candidate Trump bragged about grabbing women, Roby said she wouldn’t vote for him for president.
Trump celebrated Sanford’s defeat on Twitter, claiming success in ousting a foe. In a highly unusual move for a president, he had tweeted an endorsement of Arrington on Tuesday afternoon when polls were still open in South Carolina.
“My political representatives didn’t want me to get involved in the Mark Sanford primary thinking that Sanford would easily win - but with a few hours left I felt that Katie was such a good candidate, and Sanford was so bad, I had to give it a shot,” he said.
The transformation of the GOP under Trump makes some lawmakers uneasy.
It’s “becoming a cultish thing, isn’t it?” said retiring Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, who has an on-off relationship with Trump. “And it’s not a good place for any party to end up with a cult-like situation.”
But Trump’s preference for populist candidates like Corey Stewart, the Confederate-statue-supporting Republican who won the GOP nomination for Senate in Virginia on Tuesday, increasingly seems to be remaking the GOP, if not Congress, in his image. Stewart will face Sen. Tim Kaine, the Democratic Party’s 2016 vice presidential nominee, in the fall.
Trump ally Rep. Chris Collins of New York offered advice to fellow GOP lawmakers: Say something nice before you bring Trump any complaints.
“I would start by praising the president ... and then say, ‘But here’s an issue in my local area where I have some disagreement or I’d like to be something different,’ ” Collins said.
Talking to Trump should be like interactions with your spouse or children when you have a problem that needs airing, he said. Don’t just come out immediately “with smash mouth football.”