Where Thomas Massie went wrong |
What happens when a Republican congressman turns his primary election into a referendum on Donald Trump? What happens when he turns it into a referendum on Israel?
The answer to those questions should be stunningly obvious. There was never a reason to expect Kentucky to return a different verdict than anywhere else. Quite the contrary – it’s a staunchly red state. Asked to choose between Trump and a congressman who’d lately been garnering favorable coverage in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the New York Times, Republican voters were not about to abandon the president. The very things Thomas Massie’s newfound friends liked about him made him unacceptable to the people who actually vote in Republican primaries.
By the end of Massie’s re-election campaign, his coalition of supporters beyond his own congressional district included Democrats, anti-Zionists and anti-MAGA libertarians. Even neoconservatives developed a strange new respect for Massie. On a podcast for the Bulwark, the webzine founded by William Kristol, Tim Miller noted Massie’s support was weakest among the older voters and urged, “If you have a Mawmaw in Kentucky 4, please bring her back from the edge. Turn off the TV, turn off the Newsmax, and let her know that Tom Massie’s been a good representative for her.” Co-host Sarah Longwell then quipped, “I don’t think they have anyone who’s between 18 and 34. Those people move out of Kentucky.”
Massie was something of a “Ron Paul Republican” when he was first elected to Congress in 2012,........