Congressional Republicans have, with little resistance, accepted all manner of indignities since Donald Trump’s rise to power. They’ve been made to answer for his likening a porn star’s looks to a horse, his testimonial to the endowment of a deceased golfer and, more regularly, swallowed a tariff regime that is about as faithful to the foundations of their modern party as Das Kapital.
But the president now is testing whether party loyalty ever asks too much in the Trump era by all but signing the political death warrants of a handful of blue state Republicans.
That’s what the president is inviting with his demand that Texas Republicans redraw their House boundaries this year to hand him more seats, which he thinks will protect the GOP majority next year and protect him from what he dreads: being impeached a third time.
This mid-decade redistricting of the country’s largest red state predictably triggered a vow from the country’s largest blue state to do the same. How could Trump not grasp that California Gov. Gavin Newsom would respond by swinging with Ohtani-like fervor at an opportunity to insert himself in the national debate, build a trans-continental fundraising list and demonstrate his mettle to Democratic primary voters?