Indiana RINOs go down in primaries
Remember when the Indiana Republicans refused to play the redistricting game that’s all the rage now? The MSM covered it this way at the time (December, 2025):
Indiana Republicans withstood immense pressure from President Donald Trump, ignoring anonymous threats on their lives as they defeated his plan to redraw the state’s congressional map and dealt him one of his most significant political setbacks since his return to the White House.
The GOP-controlled state Senate on Thursday voted down 31 to 19 the map that would have gerrymandered two more safe red seats, imperiling the party’s chances at holding control of Congress next November.
What heroes, standing up bravely against the arm-twisting meanie Trump – who happens to want the GOP to win in November of 2026, unlike these members of the Indiana GOP. Were they resisting because they hate Trump, the vulgarian? Probably [emphasis mine]:
“The forces that define (the) vitriolic political affairs in places outside of Indiana have been gradually and now very blatantly infiltrat(ing) the political affairs in Indiana,” Indiana state Sen. Greg Goode, a Republican, said in his floor speech before voting against the measure. “Misinformation. Cruel social media posts over the top pressure from within the state house and outside, threats of primaries, threats of violence, acts of violence. Friends, we’re better than this.” …
Chris LaCivita, Trump’s 2024 campaign manager and adviser to Fair Maps Indiana, a dark money group that blitzed the state with ads in recent weeks, threatened retribution to Senate Republicans who voted against the bill.
“You have a state full of MAGA Republicans run by Republican MAGA haters,” LaCivita said in a pre-vote interview, mentioning Bray, former Gov. Mitch Daniels and Vice President Mike Pence. “If you don’t defend a political movement from those that stand in the way — then it’s not a movement at all — a handful of politicians in Indiana will now know what standing in the way really means.”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better statement of why GOP voters have turned to Trump: he fights, and people like the aptly-named Goode don’t, and in the current atmosphere fighting is necessary.
Five and perhaps six of those who voted with Goode have now been primaried out, although Goode himself is the only one still standing:
Just one of the seven Indiana GOP state senators who faced primary challengers backed by President Trump over their opposition to redistricting has won his Republican primary, according to Decision Desk HQ. One race has yet to be called as of Tuesday evening. …
Incumbent Sen. Greg Goode, who represents the 38th District, is the only incumbent, so far, who has fended off a challenger supported by the president.
Both when it first happened, and now, the MSM frames the battle as Trump versus the Republican senators who bravely defied him. So do the ousted legislators themselves, such as state senator Travis Holdman, defeated by 20 points in this primary:
Well, I have one lesson for people: revenge and retribution is not a Christian value. And that’s what this is all about. And I’m not bitter about it, it’s just a fact. And there’s life after serving in the Indiana Senate, and I’m going to find out what that’s like.
Pundit Chris Cillizaa’s reaction is highly typical:
Here’s s the story of the night: Donald Trump remains the king of the Republican Party.
If he wants you gone, he gets rid of you.
Just ask the 6 Indiana Republican state senators who just lost because they didn’t support Trump’s desire to redistrict the state.
That’s the story all right, as told by the media. It’s highly insulting to the GOP voters of Indiana, who were the ones who actually went to the polls and are being considered by the likes of Cillizza as programmed robots who obey the commands of the Leader.
No, the people actually felt betrayed by their own representatives and decided to turn them out. Yes, Trump agreed with the people and was vocal about it, but the people themselves had had enough of the defeatist voting of the Pence/RINO wing. That shouldn’t be so hard to understand, but it doesn’t fit the MSM narrative.
Same thing in Texas when Rural GOP RINO’s owned by the pubklic school teachers unions voted against school choice. GOP Governor Abbott swore he would get rid of every one of them in the primaries and he did. Texas now has a great school choice program.
It can be done.
I am continually surprised at the way so many in the GOP will not learn from the example of Britain’s Tories.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better statement of why GOP voters have turned to Trump: he fights, and people like the aptly-named Goode don’t, and in the current atmosphere fighting is necessary.
Yes, indeed. I supported Ted Cruz for the 2016 Presidential nomination. Trump won me over because unlike “noble” Republicans like Dubya, McCain, or Romney, he didn’t take attacks from journalists or Demo politicians lying down. He fought back.
(Recall Harry Reid falsely claiming that Romney hadn’t paid any income tax. After the election, when confronted with evidence that Romney had in fact paid his taxes, Reid’s reply was, “We won, didn’t we?”)
I’m a Hoosier who votes Republican, and I must say that today I am very proud of my Hoosier Republican brethren.
Trump and The Vulgarians? Heavy metal?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better statement of why GOP voters have turned to Trump: he fights
Trump is a socially moderate NYC Republican. But yeah, he fights. And that makes all the difference.
Yes, indeed. I supported Ted Cruz for the 2016 Presidential nomination. Trump won me over because unlike “noble” Republicans like Dubya, McCain, or Romney, he didn’t take attacks from journalists or Demo politicians lying down. He fought back.
Yes.
In the context of the 2016 election, I don’t think Cruz had a path to win. Trump had appeal to working class white voters, those that were once blue dog Democrats or at least union members.
The RINOs don’t have real principles, just want to keep their snouts in the trough. A few primaried will encourage the others to see things our way.
@ Richard Cook > “Trump and The Vulgarians? Heavy metal?”
Or Trump and the Deplorables, which is a bit more euphonious.
Notice how closely aligned the nouns are.
There is a reason a lot of the RINO / GOPe “names” went full TDS when he beat Hillary.
However, the canards levelled at Trump’s supporters were just that: social opprobrium used as a weapon to “shame” some of them back onto the two neighboring plantations of the parties, back before the Democrats went Full Marxist (although they were always socialists with their hands in the capitalists’ rice bowls).
The issue is always the revolution, and the agenda is always power.
No doubt more to it than redistricting. Every state is dealing with DEI, trans in public, trans in schools, violence from the left, hate from the left. People are tired of it.
Also tired of being called Trumpists, cultists, MAGATS because we vote against Democrats and Republicans who are more concerned with getting elected than with doing what they were elected to do.
Trump didn’t get elected because everybody agrees with everything he says or does. We agree with some, AND, we dis-agree with the psycho left. Simple stuff, no boys in girls bathrooms or girls sports, no discriminating against anybody, including white. Border control, no trans encouragement.
More investigations into fraud hospice, childcare, preschool fraud, which seems huge.
Naturally, being native Californian, I could go on and on. Hopefully there are enough dems and independents here sick of the way the state is going they will change sides and we get a Republican Gov.
@ Neo > “Misinformation. Cruel social media posts over the top pressure from within the state house and outside, threats of primaries, threats of violence, acts of violence. Friends, we’re better than this.”
I was nodding along with Mr. Goode until I realized he was referring to Republicans instead of Democrats.
Grouping “pressure within the state house” and “threats of primaries” in with “threats and acts of violence” is a mixing of acceptable political tactics with unacceptable criminal behavior in order to condemn the former by rhetorical association.
If you were threatened with the latter, call the police.
If you were “threatened” with the former, maybe it’s time you moved on with a new career.
If you can’t handle “misinformation” and “cruel social media posts” well…
As Mr. Dooley once said, “Politics ain’t bean-bag.”
To another point, I have never really understood the “we’re better than this” appeal with reference to anything other than illegal, immoral, or unethical behavior.
It depends on the “we” and the “this” — and I don’t see how standing against the expressed wishes of the leader of your professed political party when he represents the views of the majority of your constituents who belong to that party (see the primary election results) can be “better” than supporting them.
Redistricting per se is NOT “illegal, immoral, or unethical,” even when Democrats do it.
Breaking your own state’s laws on redistricting and lying to its citizens is all three.
I have not seen any stories implying that Indiana’s conservatives did either of those.
******
https://politicaldictionary.com/words/politics-aint-beanbag/
@ Niketas > “The RINOs don’t have real principles, just want to keep their snouts in the trough. A few primaried will encourage the others to see things our way.”
Keeping the pigs fed IS a principle, but we’re better than that 😉
It’s not one that should be extolled when more important issues are at stake.
However, although a serious primary challenge might encourage the RINOs to keep their heads down long enough to win an election, it won’t ever convince them to actually see things our way.
We have far too many examples of former and current representatives talking a good story on the campaign trail, and then shafting conservatives in the usual way when back in office.
Not sure whether the redistricting campaign has been beneficial or not. Am sure that careerists function as gatekeepers among Republican legislators and frustrate the achievement of notionally Republican policy goals. (See John Thune and Glitch McConnell examples). There’s also the question of personal character. Gov. Daniels came up with the notion of a ‘truce’ on social issues, a fine piece of evidence that the Governor of Indiana had no conception of the source of social conflict in the country. As for Gov. Pence, a critic noted that during his time in office he revealed himself to have ‘a spine of the purest cream cheese’. As for the Bush family, go away all of you.
Irishotter49 on May 6, 2026 at 7:25 pm:
“I’m a Hoosier who votes Republican, and I must say that today I am very proud of my Hoosier Republican brethren.”
Thus, you are just the person I wanted to ask: from my national level exposure to Mitch Daniels as a strong and successful business and political leader, with some focus on fiscal responsibility, I have had a high opinion of him for quite a while. If his disagreements with Trump are for a few policy differences, I can understand that might be the case. But if he has TDS to any degree, I want to find that harder to believe. Can you clarify any of this? Have I misjudged him or been misled somehow?
And during the editorial grace period I now saw Art Deco’s reference and reminder about Daniel’s truce posture. That posture could be taken as a positive back when the red vs. blue divergence was just beginning, and might have influenced the parties to move back towards the center. Once the nearly full separation had occurred, that viewpoint does seem ill advised and even naive for a seasoned politician.
Miller says the donkeys have about 40 seats due to foreigners being represented in congress. Not sure if this includes the 7 by straight up census fraud.
I guess we have to assume that the rinos don’t want the donks wiped out. They seem to prefer a bare majority one way or the other. When the donkeys have a bare majority, their agenda marches on. When rinos have a bare majority, the donks agenda marches on. A 40 plus seat majority leaves them no room whatsoever to pull that crap.
“In the context of the 2016 election, I don’t think Cruz had a path to win. Trump had appeal to working class white voters, those that were once blue dog Democrats or at least union members.”
1000%, Don. I also supported Cruz in the primaries and voted for Trump because, as I say, even though I still had a lot of doubts about Trump I had no doubts about Hillary. But I didn’t really think he had a chance to win.
When he did win I was shocked as well as elated and realized it was an historic elction. The vain reality show buffoon (or so we were told) won the Presidency of the US with nearly all the media against him, half his own party against him, and the opposition outspending him 2 or 3 to 1. Maybe the biggest Presidential upset since Lincoln, if not ever.
And the way he won was at least as remarkable, flipping rust belt states that hadn’t voted R in decades (MI, WI, PA). That told me that contra the Bauxites of the world he was the *only* Republican candidate who could have won that year.
— Don
Yes. Plus, and this is crucial, from a SoCon POV: Trump gets results. The GOP ran for years talking a good game on social issues, but actually accomplishing nothing or not much. Trump might be a social moderate or even a private social liberal, but it was Trump who appointed the justices who reversed Roe.
In terms of actual results, Trump is the best thing to happen to SoCons since at least Reagan.
— Art Deco
Or more likely just didn’t care about it. Daniels is a classic ‘business wing Republican’, he cared about budgets and corporate interests, not abortion or marriage or much of anything else.
See this analysis of Daniels and the Indiana GOP establishment, it’s very relevant: https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/revisiting-mitch-daniels-truce-on
— R2L
I’m not the one you asked, but I can tell you about Daniels. I don’t know that he has TDS, but he is in many ways the epitome of the ‘business wing GOP’. The red/blue division wasn’t new in 2012, it was already deeply entrenched. It was new in the eighties and nineties.
It was social issues that broke the former total Democratic dominance that FDR set up, and that lasted almost half a century. It was the 3As, ‘abortion, acid, and amnesty’, though back then ‘amnesty’ referred to draft-dodging. It was social and national security issues that elected Reagan, that recaptured the House in 1994, that kept Gore and Kerry out of the White House.
But for decades, the GOP would run on social/national security issues and and then once in power ignore them to implement the corporate/business agenda, which is far and away their least popular suit with the voters. The trouble is that it’s the most popular with the donors, and it’s who the GOPe are.
By 2012 the GOP voters were fed up with it. Daniels was the perceived front-runner in the 2012 GOP election, though the primaries had not started yet, but then came that infamous interview with The Weekly Standard and his ‘truce on the social issues’ comment that ended his campaign and his political career in one stroke.
It was just precisely what the GOP base voters did not want to hear. It was more of the ‘business agenda only’ approach. ‘Fiscal conservative/social liberal’ is the preferred approach of the GOP establishment, but it’s sheer political poison on E-day.
— Chases Eagles
I have been convinced for years that Mitch McConnell’s preferred state would be to be the minority leader of a huge minority. That way he could talk about issues GOP voters care about without having to deliver, and could represent business interests just about as effectively. Next best to McConnell would be a narrow Senate majority, so narrow he can’t lose any vote and can point to that as a reason for not pursuing the priorities of the GOP voters.]
“But we can still pass a free trade bill and fix our broken immigration system, so let’s focus on that!”
The corporate agenda and the agenda of the other GOP factions are almost 180 degrees out of phase with each other.
Back when the Royal Navy was serious, the line was “pour encouragez les autres.”
(Yes, I know it was Voltaire who said it. But it worked. For the rest of the Seven Years’ War, they kicked butt.)
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better statement of why GOP voters have turned to Trump: he fights, and people like the aptly-named Goode don’t, and in the current atmosphere fighting is necessary.”
Yes!
I am Christian and have some Christian friends who I say they can’t support Trump because he doesn’t behave as a Christian. I don’t argue with them but if this life on earth and in America means anything,and I think it does, Trump the fighter is our best shot.
“…because he doesn’t behave asaChristian…”
May not be the best reason to support a political party that is Hell-bent on a policy of personal, social, economic and national destruction…but at least it’s defensible.
(While they’re at it they can take pride(!) in their elevated sense of decency and their extraordinary ability to—in spite of everything—turn the other cheek…in fact, all four of them…)
@Mark:I am Christian and have some Christian friends who I say they can’t support Trump because he doesn’t behave as a Christian.
Who is it your Christian friends support, that are such good Christians? By this means you can gauge whether they actually believe themselves the argument they are trying to sell you.
We’re at war and have been for at least two generations.
Republicans regularly behave as if we are playing tennis.
Thank you for this article, Neo. I was unsure why these Republicans voted against redistricting.
Also, you wrote “the aptly-named Goode,” while I would have said “ironically-named.” Maybe you think his name is pronounced Goody? (I don’t know how he pronounces it.)
Did they fail to read room?
Might wonder how much incoming from their constituency -voters supported the new move.
@Barry, @Niketas Agree with both of you. My church friends fail to be honest about what the Dems currently stand for.
Mark
Christians really have a problem confronting naked evil. As I said before they are Christians in no sense of the word. They brought into the gentle Jesus meek and mild “theology”.
https://youtu.be/VlMS1oxvj7I?si=55JxqyHzGsuFFdK7
HC68, thanks for your response on Mitch Daniels.
On Christians and evil:
is evil “something” that exists outside of the human brain/human mind? And if so, presumably “the good” does as well? Or is the argument vice-versa?
Personally I believe our minds are totally a biological “within the brain” phenomenon, including our consciousness and our conscience*.
But Amazon emails promoting some of their books present several sources attempting to support consciousness as a “force” or whatever outside of human or biological factors. Or even having aspects or elements of quantum mechanics beyond the major role of the electromagnetic force in atomic and molecular chemistry. I have bought a few of those books but have not yet read them.
But this might be a shortcut.
A recent YouTube [34 minutes] explores several angles on all of this:
Arvin Ash – Science Still Can’t Explain Consciousness…Here’s Why [34 mins]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtJEMrTNCsE
*the latter having both genetic and nurture/environmental/cultural aspects.