“They liked him for a long time,” Trump said of Mehmet Oz at a rally in Pennsylvania last week. “It’s like a poll. You know, when you’re 18 on TV, it’s like a poll. That means people like you. “ Trump surprised his party with his decision to support Oz, who is having a hard time in the actual polls and is not sure he will win the Republican primary. It was one of the dozens of dangerous bets Trump made on extreme candidates. The upcoming primaries – state and county ballots to decide which Republicans will face the Democrats in the November midterm elections – are shaped by a referendum on party dominance. The next month can be crucial. The defeat for Oz by David McCormick in Pennsylvania on May 17, followed by the Trump-backed David Pardew’s defeat to current Gov. Brian Kemp in Georgia a week later, could cause a huge blow to T king of the party. A defeat for Mehmet Oz could deal a huge symbolic blow to Trump’s tenure as party’s king. Photo: Joe Marino / UPI / REX / Shutterstock Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for Policy and Governance Studies at the University of Minnesota, said: “Donald Trump looks like a reckless gambler entering a casino and stacking his money in a number. Right now the roulette wheel is spinning and, if you make a mistake in some of them, you will see increasing disobedience. “It’s almost certain that the growing feeling among the Republican leadership that the Trump era has come and gone will be strengthened this year. He has put his political capital on the line in so many struggles. “A more experienced politician would be a little more prudent, a little more careful in these close struggles.” A series of primary losses for Trump’s election could also shatter the aura of inevitability around him as a partisan party in the 2024 race for the White House, encouraging potential rivals such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSadis. Jacobs added: “There are definitely some Republicans looking at the presidential candidacy who are ready to face Trump, especially if they see him as weak. That’s the orientation of many Republican leaders. They would like to see Trump quietly drift past. “Like so much for Trump, he refuses to continue and wants to still be a player.” Never before has a US president resigned just to continue to invade the country with rallies and so aggressively run in congressional elections. Why Trump is so willing to risk his name – and how he would react to being blown away by Republican voters – remains a matter of speculation. An obvious motive is to settle believers who cross the Lydia stone to support his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen by Joe Biden. Trump is laying the groundwork for “big lie” suppliers to take control of the electoral system across the country. Allan Lichtman, a distinguished professor of history at the American University in Washington, D.C., said: like the people of Michigan, Arizona and Georgia who think they can help him steal the next election if he is a candidate. “ There are also financial incentives. Trump’s Save America group, responsible for countless fundraising events and emails, earned a whopping $ 124 million between November 2020 and March 2022, while spending only about $ 14 million, or about 11%, to support middlemen, according to an analysis. of the Reuters news agency. . “This has become a business for Trump,” said Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. “As his other businesses are either sold or foreclosed or subject to lawsuits or criminal investigations, he continues to raise a lot of money and can support his way of life through all these activities.” He added: “Second, it is trying to build local support bases in swing states. If he does decide to run, these are all people who will participate in prefectural and state political organizations. “They will be people who are going to vote in this Republican primary election, so the more contacts he makes locally, the better position he will be.” A procession of Republican candidates paved the way for Trump’s luxury Mar Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in hopes of joining the anointed. They manage the range from shoo-ins to the very near-to-call to genuine outsiders. On Friday night, Trump announced his support for JB Vance, author of the Hillbilly Elegy memoir, for a fiercely competitive qualifier in the Ohio Senate. “Like some others, JD Vance may have said some not-so-great things about me in the past, but he understands now, and I’ve seen it in the sticks,” the former president explained. He is also an all-in for Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and a candidate for vice president, who is far from winning a vacant seat in Parliament in her homeland. “Sarah shocked many when she supported me very early in 2016 and we won a lot,” Trump said. “Now it’s my turn!” Trump approved of Sarah Palin for a vacancy in Alaska. Photo: Shannon Stapleton / Reuters But the top battle may come in Wyoming in August, when lawmaker Liz Cheney, who has come to personify the party’s resistance to Trump, is challenged for a seat in Parliament by Trump’s Harriet Hugh. Cheney has a huge name recognition in the state and raises huge sums of money. Some of Trump’s ratifications have already failed. In the Pennsylvania Senate race – potentially crucial to defining the party that controls the House – he initially backed Sean Parnell, only to run as a candidate amid allegations of spousal abuse. Trump’s subsequent decision to support Oz, which is said to be encouraged by Trump’s wife, Melania, and Fox News presenter Sean Hannidi, has its own obligations. The host of The Dr Oz Show is described by critics as a seller of snake oil. In 2014, he admitted to Congress that some of the products promoted on his show did not have a “scientific focus.” Another failure occurred in Alabama, where Trump withdrew his support for MP Mo Brooks in a race for the Senate, arguing that Brooks “made a horrible mistake” when he told supporters to leave the 2020 election behind. most observers suspect that the real reason was that opinion polls show that Brooks is heading for defeat. Trump’s victory-defeat record is sure to be studied hard by experts. However, if the past is a prologue, it would not be hard to imagine rejecting defeats in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wyoming and elsewhere as the fault of weak candidates or rigged elections, while claiming the victories of the capital as their own. Frank Luntz, a pollster and political adviser, said: “I do not think it’s dangerous for him because he does not recognize defeat: if they win, they win because of him. if they lose, they lose because of their own failure. “ He added: “It is not as popular today as it was a year ago. The glow is not as bright, but he is still by far the most impressive Republican, and his support means something. “I understand why the candidates really want it, but they have to think about it: what gives you the candidacy in Pennsylvania will cost you the election.” Trump has been deleted countless times in the past. But at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, he received more votes in a 2024 nomination poll than all the other Republicans combined. So would a storm of primary defeats break the fever? Reed Galen, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “Some people will say that. more people may even want to believe it. The chatter class of both parties in Washington DC, starting from [Senator Mitch] McConnell, on the Republican side, will read these tea leaves this way. “But it is not true because, in the end, Trump claims that someone against Trump is on the ballot – the majority of these first voters will return to him if he decides to run again.” Therefore, DeSantis and other would-be candidates should not jump to conclusions, Galen added. “I will tend to agree with the idea that there would be a weakness that potential challengers will realize in 2024,” Galen said. “It simply came to our notice then. “I do not think this equation leads to him being beaten in qualifiers.”