The cliffhanger House primary that reveals everything about Trump’s GOP

CNN —

It’s a primary election that took an MRI of the modern Republican Party — revealing toxic backstabbing, desperate lunges for Donald Trump’s favor and the former president’s always festering sense of betrayal.

And no one knows how it will end.

Rep. Bob Good – an arch conservative whom Trump is trying to bump out of Congress for disloyalty – trails his GOP challenger, state Sen. John McGuire, by just over 340 votes after Tuesday’s election in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District, with about 96% of votes in. The fate of Trump’s quest for revenge could ironically partly hang on mail-in ballots – a category of votes the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has often decried with his false claims of 2020 election fraud.

Trump is angry at Good, the chair of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, because he initially endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the GOP presidential race.

Kevin McCarthy also showed that Virginia is for vengeance by seeking his own bounty on Good, who helped to oust the California Republican as speaker last year. Good could become the first Republican incumbent to lose a House primary to a nonincumbent this year despite his frantic efforts to win back Trump’s support, which included a trip to support the former president at his hush money trial in New York.

McGuire told supporters Tuesday night, “I’m your Republican nominee,” and thanked Trump for his help, even though the race could be heading for a recount if the margin between the two candidates remains so tight and the losing candidate requests one. Good said on social media that he’d held off the “Washington swamp” and declared the race “too close to call.” CNN has not made a projection.