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. Cornyn, a four-term senator and an establishment pillar, had spent months delicately auditioning for Trump’s approval, dutifully aligned himself with MAGA priorities like his many feckless Senate colleagues who now paw the ground before the boss. It didn’t matter; Trump instead chose Paxton, a man with enough legal and ethical baggage to require his own airport carousel, but whose real qualification is even greater loyalty to the boss than Cornyn could summon. The message to party factotums was unmistakable: experience is optional, ideology negotiable, electability overrated – but fealty to Trump is mandatory.The GOP establishment led by Senate Republican leader John Thune had preferred Cornyn, because, aside from his experience, polls show him beating the Democratic candidate James Talarico, whereas Paxton is vulnerable against him. But Trump dumped Cornyn anyway to reinforce his control of the party. Last week, Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, who voted to convict Trump after the January 6 insurrection, suffered a similar fate at the hands of a Trump-backed challenger. Trump’s dominance now extends beyond elections into the daily functioning of government itself. Commentators in Washington increasingly compare the atmosphere around the administration to a patronage empire in which loyalty is rewarded and dissent punished with efficiency worthy of the former USSR. Cabinet members echo Trump’s language almost verbatim and Republican lawmakers fall over each other to defend policy reversals they once opposed, often appearing alongside the President displaying cloying sycophancy worthy of North Korea, whose dispensation the MAGA boss openly admires. Recent controversies involving tax enforcement and ethics oversight have only intensified accusations that institutions once designed to act independently are now operating with extraordinary deference toward Trump, his family, and his business interests. The White House rejects such claims as partisan hysteria, but even conservatives outside MAGAsphere concede that no modern president has exercised this degree of personal command over his party and administration.That may explain the central paradox of Trumpism in 2026: Trump’s national approval ratings remain dismal, especially among independents and suburban voters. Yet inside the GOP, he is the boss because he did not merely inherit the Party; he has rebuilt it in his own image. Voters who once cared about fiscal conservatism or foreign policy now prize cultural combat, media warfare, and loyalty to Trump above everything else. To many MAGA voters, attacks on Trump are seen not as political disagreements but as attacks on their tribe, identity, and social status.The party’s ecosystem reinforces this dynamic daily. MAGA media personalities, activist groups, donors, and online influencers all function as an interconnected loyalty network in which deviation from Trump means political suicide. A senator can survive poor polling, but surviving a Trump nickname is harder. So Republican politicians continue their synchronized choreography of devotion. Some do it enthusiastically; others do it with the haunted expression of hostages reading prepared statements. Dissenters like Cassidy and Massie go into the dustbin of party history.
