The litmus tests about whether Trump is losing his grip on the party are starting to pile up.

Most of the House Republicans who voted to impeach him are running for reelection, daring Trump to prove in their primaries that righty voters resent them as much as he does. Some Republicans who didn’t support impeachment but who’ve landed on his sh*t list for other reasons are plowing ahead in their own races despite his having endorsed their opponents. The most notable example is Brian Kemp in Georgia but don’t overlook Nancy Mace’s bid for reelection to the House, which has taken many turns in the last 13 months and which most recently saw her burbling about her enthusiasm for the MAGA agenda in front of Trump Tower.

The candidacies of Kemp and Mace raise an intriguing question about the state of the GOP in 2022: What matters more, whether Trump endorses you or whether you endorse him? Even if he backs your opponent and spouts contempt for you regularly, can you remain in the good graces of most Republican voters by continuing to dutifully express support for his program? Kemp and Mace have each done that, taking the shots he’s directed at them with good cheer and never firing back. (Mace urged the party to move on from Trump after January 6 but has clammed up about that since then, like her fellow South Carolinian, Nikki Haley.)

The stakes for Trump are high in these races. He’ll succeed in ousting Liz Cheney in Wyoming because her political identity is now primarily Never Trump and only secondarily Republican conservatism. But how much influence will he have in steering voters away from candidates of whom that isn’t true, such as Kemp and Mace? If they win their primaries — and they’re both ahead right now in the polling — it’ll prove that you can get away with defying Trump so long as your top priority remains owning the libs and advancing the right’s agenda. And that could have unpredictable consequences for the 2024 presidential primary.

Mace told The State that she’s up to the challenge, and pointed to her video outside Trump Tower to hint that while she’s still pro-Trumpism she’s no longer pro-Trump:

“I’m gonna win without him,” Mace said…

“If you call it groveling, I would say you didn’t watch the video,” Mace said. “I think it’s important to know what I said, but also what I didn’t say — present tense versus past tense.”

In that video, which took Mace six takes to get exactly right, she said she supports Trump’s policies.

Present tense.

Mace also said she supported Trump.

Past tense.

The State says it’s seen a poll taken in Mace’s district after Trump endorsed one of her three primary opponents, Katie Arrington. Result: Mace 46, Arrington 31. Without the endorsement, Mace leads 54/25 — evidence that Trump’s support hasn’t made a night-and-day difference for the challenger. Analysts interviewed by the paper cite a number of reasons Mace might prevail, starting with the fact that Arrington lost this seat to a Democrat in 2018 after she successfully primaried outspoken anti-Trumper Mark Sanford. The fact that the MAGA vote is currently split among multiple candidates is another point in Mace’s favor (although it’s reasonable to think the field will eventually clear for Arrington), as is the fact that the district is suburban, where Trump struggled against Biden. And, importantly, Mace has secured the endorsement of one of South Carolina’s most popular politicians: Nikki Haley, who backed her shortly before Trump announced his endorsement of Arrington. Haley, a former governor, has a net favorability of +62 in Mace’s district, per The State.

Would Haley dare campaign for Mace in that district knowing that Trump is on the other side? She’s been careful not to cross him again since criticizing him after January 6. But if Haley senses that Mace is primed to win this race, she might seize this as an opportunity to align with the winning side by doing a few events for her locally. If Mace prevails, Haley ends up looking like a kingmaker at Trump’s expense and gets some free flattering coverage about how much influence she still retains in her home state. That’s a good narrative for her in case an opportunity to run presents itself in 2024.

Because the national environment is so favorable to Republicans, it’s likely that Arrington will win this seat in November if she manages to beat Mace. But it’s not as clear what will happen in states like Georgia, where Stacey Abrams stands a real chance of capitalizing on a divided GOP to win the governor’s office. That’s the other great peril for Trump in going all-in on primaries against his enemies: If we end up with a bunch of Democrats winning races they should have lost because Trump succeeded at replacing Republican incumbents with weaker MAGA nominees, he’ll pay a price. Republican voters already watched him fumble away two Senate seats in Georgia. If he screws up their “Never Democrats” wave election this fall for the sake of carrying out his personal vendettas, he won’t be the same afterward. Frank Luntz looks ahead:

Luntz said, “Let’s make some news. If you look at the polling data, and you do the focus groups, you talk to independents as I have done. I find it difficult to see any other conclusion than Republicans winning control of the House and winning control of the Senate in November. Now a lot of stuff can change. And I know that we don’t know what’s going to happen in Ukraine. But Republicans should win both of those based on what’s happening right now and what we know is going to happen in the coming months.”

He continued, “Only Donald Trump could stand in that way. Only Donald Trump, what he says, how he says it, could prevent Republicans from winning the majority. If he makes this about November of 2020 or January of 2021, it could cost Republicans the Senate. If he tries to make this election about himself, the Republicans could lose due to Trump.”

I’m sure Trump would prefer to see Kemp, Mace, and the pro-impeachment Republicans defeated by Democrats if they manage to survive their primaries but most Republican voters would not. Maybe that opens the door in 2024 to someone like DeSantis, who looks likely to win reelection in Florida easily and could maximize his “own the libs” appeal to GOP voters by focusing on the importance of defeating Democrats above all other things in Republican politics, including personal grudges and theories about what happened in 2020.

I’ll leave you with this Axios piece about Trump’s Super PAC sucking all the fundraising oxygen out of the room for the party, inundating Republican donors with requests for cash that have left other candidates deprived and then not sharing the wealth with Trump-backed challengers in primaries. It’s a cliche by now but it’s true: Trump expects loyalty from the party but feels no obligation to respond in kind. And if we end up with a bunch of Trump enemies winning their primaries this summer, I suspect we’ll see further proof of it when he declines to endorse them in the general election.

Update: This is a nice get for Mace, and evidence of her counterstrategy against Trump:

Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney endorsed South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace over her Republican primary challenger backed by former President Trump.

Mace announced she had received Mulvaney’s endorsement in a Monday press release, where the former Trump White House chief backed the congresswoman as “a proven fiscally conservative leader for South Carolina and the Lowcountry.”

“Getting things done in Washington isn’t easy and it doesn’t have to be a nasty business – especially when Members of Congress put their constituents’ needs before partisan politics,” Mulvaney said. “The fact Congresswoman Mace held over 1,000 meetings in the district in her first year in office shows how she is dedicating everything she has to the Lowcountry.”

If Mace can’t have Trump’s endorsement, the next best thing is to have the endorsement of people closely associated with Trump, like his former chief of staff. Mace needs MAGA voters to feel they have “permission” to support her over Trump’s wishes. The more Trump-affiliated endorsements she can pile up, the likelier those voters are to feel that way.