The TOI correspondent from Washington : In the Grand Old Party (GOP), as the Republican Party is called, Senators once strode around Capitol Hill like feudal barons, House committee chairmen wielded power like medieval dukes, and Presidents often had to negotiate with their own party stalwarts. In Donald Trump’s MAGA-fied Republican Party, the operating principle is simpler: The President is king, kiss the ring, and hope your primary party rival doesn’t suddenly receive a Truth Social blessing at 2:13 a.m.
The latest evidence of Trump’s command over the party arrived this week in Texas, where he endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton against veteran Senator John Cornyn, co-chair of the Senate India Caucus, in a Republican Senate runoff. The endorsement landed in Washington like a mafia don publicly replacing a longtime lieutenant with a younger enforcer, even as in another party primary in Kentucky, Thomas Massie, a maverick Congressman who stood up to the MAGA supremo, was drubbed by Ed Gallrein, a Trump-backed Navy Seal.
