2026年5月6日 美国东部时间13:36 / CNN政治频道
亚伦·布莱克 分析报道
5月4日，唐纳德·特朗普总统抵达白宫出席小企业峰会。
安纳贝尔·戈登/美联社/彭博社/盖蒂图片社
就在2021年1月6日国会山骚乱发生仅两个月后，尽管一些共和党人还幻想着能摆脱唐纳德·特朗普，南卡罗来纳州联邦参议员林赛·格雷厄姆就站出来给出了现实的警示。
这位共和党籍参议员将特朗普时代的共和党比作一场人质事件，并敦促他所在的政党尽力适应这种“被挟持”的状态。
“他能让共和党成为我认识的其他人都无法打造的样子。他能让共和党规模更大、实力更强、更多元化，”格雷厄姆在接受《HBO的Axios》采访时说道。随后这位参议员补充道：“但他也有可能毁掉这个党。”
格雷厄姆表示，特朗普既有“阴暗面”，也有“魔力”——而最好的结果是共和党能得到后者。
周二的选举证明了格雷厄姆的话有多正确——尽管共和党正眼睁睁地面临一位在民意调查中极不受欢迎的总统的阴暗面带来的种种危险。
五个月前，印第安纳州州参议院的共和党议员们或许是迄今为止特朗普本党成员对他发起的最令人震惊的谴责。他们明确反对特朗普提出的新国会选区划分方案，以及他就此事发出的明确威胁，从而对他对该党的掌控提出了质疑。
但在周二，特朗普成功地制裁了他们的“叛逃”行为。
特朗普及其政治运作团队将他们作为目标的7名州参议员中至少5人赶下了台。（一场初选结果尚未揭晓，1名参议员得以幸存。）
这些失败的意义不容小觑。在如今高度极化的时代，大多数议员根本不用担心在大选中落败，因此初选是他们连任面临的唯一真正障碍。特朗普充分利用了这一点。他通过让任何与他作对的共和党议员日子不好过来强化党内忠诚度，并将他们中的许多人赶下台——通常是迫使他们退休。
周二的选举表明，即便在政治上有所削弱，特朗普仍有能力毁掉任何不遵从他路线的共和党议员的政治生涯。
“有时你可以按自己的心意投票，但有时你必须从政党立场出发投票，”特朗普的顶级政治顾问詹姆斯·布莱尔周三告诉CNN的达纳·巴什。“作为当选的政党领袖，总统有权决定哪种投票符合立场，他一直都明确且坦诚地表明这一点。没人应该对这一切感到意外。”
这一信息不会被那些可能像1月6日事件后一些人那样认为政治格局已经改变的共和党人忽视。他们将继续活在对他的恐惧之中。
但尽管这对特朗普的政治资本来说是好消息，对于一个正被总统拖垮中期选举希望的共和党而言，这绝对算不上什么好消息。
在任何正常的中期选举年，如果总统的支持率跌至35%左右，议员们都会争先恐后地与他保持距离，并试图调整政党的政治路线。想想2006年和2008年的乔治·W·布什：他甚至都没有出席2008年的共和党全国代表大会。
但共和党人的做法却恰恰相反，因为他们觉得为了生存必须如此。
或许没有什么比特朗普的海湖庄园项目更能说明这一点了。
这个问题六个月来一直是共和党头上的政治包袱。它象征着特朗普在政治上的怪异之举：坚持要在华盛顿到处打上自己的名字和肖像，建造豪华建筑，而与此同时美国人却认为他忽视了民众的生活成本担忧。
但在过去一周，共和党人不仅对这个项目听之任之，还欣然接受。格雷厄姆和其他人提议由纳税人承担费用（尽管特朗普曾承诺纳税人一分钱都不用出）。而如今参议院共和党人已经在一项无关法案中插入了10亿美元，用于为这座庄园提供安保支持。
在中期选举还有六个月的时候，这种做法看似是政治上的失策，但特朗普要求这么做。这就是为什么一些在政治上处于安全席位的议员会利用这个问题来讨好总统——尽管这可能会对他们那些更弱势的同僚产生不利影响。
伊朗局势以及特朗普对此的随意处理方式，也呈现出类似的情况。
周二，他派国防部长、国务卿以及参谋长联席会议主席详细阐述并宣扬所谓“自由计划”的战略智慧。这一备受质疑的行动旨在在伊朗的威胁下，引导船只通过拥堵的霍尔木兹海峡。但仅仅几小时后，特朗普就表示该计划已暂停，同时他再次暗示和平协议即将达成。
特朗普此前多次暗示协议即将达成，但始终未能兑现，协议的具体内容也鲜为人知。他也多次虚张声势。因此，这场很快就会成为特朗普和共和党重大政治负担的战争，这可能只是又一个令人费解的战略时刻。
上周的民调显示，仅在冲突爆发两个月后，就有61%的美国人认为这场战争是个错误；而伊拉克战争用了三年时间才达到这一“错误”比例，越南战争则用了六年。
但自始至终，国会共和党人几乎没有表现出兴趣去行使宪法权力来制约特朗普的战争权——或者至少试图说服白宫改变路线。他们中的大多数人似乎陷入了瘫痪，仿佛别无选择。
周二的选举也说明了他们为何会有这种感受。
因此，看起来大多数共和党人将继续推动特朗普极不受欢迎的海湖庄园项目和他极不受欢迎的伊朗战争。
他们会为他攻击一位极受欢迎的美国教皇的言论辩护，并为他的法律报复行动正名——而美国人对这些行动的看法相当负面。
他们会争相为共和党划定更多国会选区，尽管一些新的选区可能会对该党适得其反，在2026年仅能带来微弱的席位增加——远远不足以抵御越来越有可能出现的蓝色浪潮。
所有这些做法似乎都没有在中期选举中为共和党带来任何政治上的好处，但这是特朗普要求的，所以他们还是照做了。
毕竟，一个人质还能做什么呢？
Trump just reasserted his domination of the GOP. But that might not be good news for the party in 2026
May 6, 2026 1:36 PM ET / CNN Politics
Analysis by Aaron Blake
President Donald Trump arrives for a small business summit at the White House on May 4.
Annabelle Gordon/UPI/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Just two months after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol — even as some Republicans harbored illusions about moving beyond Donald Trump — Sen. Lindsey Graham stepped forward with a reality check.
The South Carolina Republican likened the Trump-era GOP to a hostage situation and urged his party to make the best of its captivity.
“He could make the Republican Party something that nobody else I know can make it. He can make it bigger. He can make it stronger. He can make it more diverse,” Graham told “Axios on HBO.” Then the senator added: “And he also could destroy it.”
Graham said Trump both had a “dark side” and was capable of “magic” — and that it was best to hope the party got the magic.
Tuesday’s elections proved how right Graham was — even as the GOP is decidedly staring down the perils of a historically unpopular president’s dark side.
Five months ago, Indiana state Senate Republicans delivered perhaps the most stunning rebuke of Trump to date from members of his own party. They called into question his domination of the party by firmly rejecting his new congressional map — and his pronounced threats over it.
But on Tuesday, Trump successfully sanctioned their apostasy.
Trump and his political operation unseated at least five of seven state senators they had targeted for voting against that map. (One primary race remains unresolved. One senator survived.)
The significance of those defeats shouldn’t be understated. Most lawmakers never have to worry about losing a general election in today’s polarized age, which makes primaries their only real hurdle to reelection. Trump has used this fact to great effect. He’s enforced loyalty by making life hell for any Republican who runs afoul of him, and he’s ushered plenty of them out the door — often via forced retirement.
Tuesday showed that even a politically diminished Trump still has the juice to end a Republican’s career if they don’t toe his line.
“Sometimes you can vote your feelings, but sometimes you need to vote with the party,” James Blair, a top Trump political adviser, told CNN’s Dana Bash on Wednesday. “As the elected party leader, the president gets to decide which vote is which, and he is always clear and up-front about it. Nobody should be surprised about any of this.”
And that message won’t be lost on Republicans who might have thought, like some did after January 6, that the paradigm had shifted. They’ll continue to live in fear of him.
But while this is great news for Trump’s political capital, it is decidedly less great news for a GOP whose midterm hopes the president is sinking.
In any normal midterm year where the president had an approval rating sinking into the mid-30s, you’d see lawmakers tripping over themselves to create some distance from him and trying to adjust the party’s political course. Think George W. Bush in 2006 and 2008; he and his vice president didn’t even attend the 2008 Republican National Convention.
But Republicans are doing quite the opposite, because they feel they must to survive.
Perhaps nothing drives this home like Trump’s ballroom.
This issue is a political albatross for the GOP and has been for six months. It’s emblematic of Trump’s politically bizarre insistence on slapping his name and likeness all over Washington and building fancy things, even as Americans see him neglecting their cost-of-living concerns.
But over the past week, Republicans haven’t just humored the project; they’ve embraced it. Graham and others proposed making taxpayers pay for it (despite Trump’s promises that taxpayers would pay nothing). And now Senate Republicans have slipped $1 billion into an unrelated bill to shore up security for the ballroom.
This would seem to be political malpractice six months before the midterms, but Trump demands it. That’s why we’ve seen some politically safe lawmakers use the issue to curry favor with the president — even though it could work against their more vulnerable brethren.
The Iran war — and Trump’s haphazard approach to it — presents similar dynamics.
On Tuesday, he sent out his secretaries of defense and state and the chairman of his Joint Chiefs of Staff to detail and espouse the supposed strategic brilliance of “Project Freedom,” the questionable effort to try to guide ships through the logjammed Strait of Hormuz amid Iranian threats. But then, mere hours later, Trump said the project was paused as he yet again suggested a peace deal could be near.
Trump has suggested a deal was close many times before, but it’s yet to arrive and the details of what it could entail remain scant. He’s also repeatedly bluffed. So it’s possible this is merely the latest head-scratching strategic moment in a war that is fast becoming a major liability for Trump and the GOP.
Polling last week showed 61% of Americans labeled the war a mistake after just two months; the Iraq war took three years for the “mistake” number to reach that high, and the Vietnam war took six.
But through it all, congressional Republicans have demonstrated vanishingly little interest in asserting their constitutional powers to rein in Trump’s war powers — or in at least trying to convince the White House to change course. Most of them seem paralyzed, as if they have no choice.
And Tuesday showed why they feel that way.
So it appears most of the GOP will keep pushing Trump’s highly unpopular ballroom and his highly unpopular war.
They’ll excuse his attacks on a highly popular American pope and legitimize his legal retribution campaign, which Americans appear to view rather dimly.
They’ll scramble to draw him more GOP congressional districts, even though some new districts could backfire on the party and result in marginal gains in 2026 — not nearly enough to beat back an increasingly likely blue wave.
None of it appears to be doing Republicans any political favors in the midterms, but it’s what Trump demands, so they do it.
Because what else is a hostage to do?
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