The best story in primary elections this year is going to be the struggle for control of the Republican Party between former President Donald Trump and his various opponents, most prominently Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. It’s such a good story, in fact, that everything is likely to be interpreted as a test of Trump’s strength, regardless of what’s really going on.

Then-President Donald Trump, left, introduces then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., during a “Make America Great Again” rally at Eastern Kentucky University, in Richmond, Ky., in 2018. There’s no sign that McConnell’s 2022 Senate primary endorsements are motivated by antipathy toward Trump. Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images/TNS, File

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. He taught political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University and wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

Take reports that McConnell has been recruiting anti-Trump candidates for Senate campaigns, with the assistance in some cases of former President George W. Bush and his circle. Reported examples include: Republican Govs. Doug Ducey of Arizona, Larry Hogan of Maryland and Chris Sununu of New Hampshire. He’s also fighting for Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski to win re-election against a Trump-endorsed challenger, and has worked to avoid any primary threat to South Dakota Sen. John Thune.

I don’t doubt that McConnell would like to see Trump’s influence within the party diminished. But it’s unlikely that any of these examples are mainly motivated by antipathy toward the former president. McConnell has long made clear that what he cares about is electing as many Republicans to his chamber as possible. After nomination catastrophes in the tea party era, such as Todd Akin in Missouri and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, both of whom lost potentially winnable Senate races in landslides, McConnell has tried hard to prevent what he calls “goofball” candidacies. That hasn’t always worked – Roy Moore’s Senate campaign in Alabama in 2017 was a more recent example – but it’s been McConnell’s priority. Popular governors such as Ducey, Hogan and Sununu are obvious strong-on-paper general-election candidates. And congressional leaders almost always support incumbents such as Murkowski and Thune. McConnell would surely be recruiting and supporting each of these candidates even if Trump never existed.

So far at least, there’s no sign – not even a hint – that McConnell would be willing to risk a Senate seat to diminish Trump’s standing.

As far as Trump is concerned, it’s also not entirely clear what his motives are. In some cases, he appears to be trying to punish opponents, such as those in Congress who voted to impeach or convict him or state officials who refused to overturn the 2020 presidential election for him. In other cases, he appears to be just endorsing incumbents, a fairly ordinary task for high-visibility party figures. Thirty of Trump’s 42 House race endorsements are for incumbents, as are most of his picks for state offices in the upcoming Texas primaries. Overlapping with everything Trump does, of course, are his continuing efforts to steer as much money into his own pocket as possible.

At the same time, candidates seeking Trump’s endorsement may not necessarily continue to support him if they win. We’ve seen this throughout Trump’s political career. He doesn’t generally trade his backing for policy commitments or even specific forms of support. Instead, he seems to expect absolute loyalty from those whom he has endorsed, or those he named to his administration, only to have them refuse to go along with him on something – after which he denounces them and often severs the relationship. In other words, while some of those Trump endorsees will surely stay loyal, others will turn out to have been using him when it was convenient and will support him only if it remains in their self-interest. This is, of course, normal U.S. politics, but Trump seems very good at blinding people to that.

Which gets back to where I started: Whatever is actually going on, the battle for influence within the party is the story that everyone will be focused on during the primaries this year. And to at least some extent, that will become a self-fulfilling interpretation; if everyone is convinced that Trump is or isn’t powerful, it will affect how they act going forward.