GOP Rep. Justin Amash spent the weekend tweeting that Donald Trump deserved to be impeached for obstruction of justice, and on Monday, he picked up a primary challenge from Michigan state Rep. Jim Lower. Lower declared that he had been planning to announce a bid against Amash around Independence Day, but that he wanted to get in immediately after Amash’s tweetstorm. Afghanistan veteran Tom Norton kicked off his own primary bid a few weeks ago, but given his bad prior electoral history, it’s not a surprise he’s already getting overshadowed by Lower.
This weekend was hardly the first time that Amash has gone where no other Republican member of Congress dares to go, and it’s very possible it’s because Amash might not be a Republican for much longer. In March, Amash said that, while running for president against Trump as a Libertarian Party candidate was "not on my radar right now," he didn’t rule it out. He also mused to CNN at the time that he "never stop[s] thinking about" launching a third-party bid against Trump, saying, "It’s not because I have any immediate plans or anything like that, but I never stop thinking about those things because there is a big problem with the current two-party system we have, and someone has to shake it up." He added that he didn’t know if it were "possible for anyone to shake it up and make a difference."
No matter what Amash ends up doing, or what party he ends up doing it with, it’s quite clear he doesn’t care about making enemies in the GOP. Amash has been an iconoclast in the Republican caucus ever since he was first elected to this Grand Rapids-area seat in 2010, with him often voting against the leadership’s priorities on libertarian grounds, but the Trump era has only isolated him even more from his colleagues. In March, for instance, Amash was the one Republican in the House to vote to condemn Trump’s bogus emergency declaration. But Amash still went even further than usual this weekend when he took to social media and wrote that, after reading the Mueller Report he believed that Trump “has engaged in impeachable conduct.”
While Trump’s associates have spent years railing against Amash and calling for his defeat in a primary, Trump himself waited until Sunday to let loose. He tweeted, “Never a fan of @justinamash, a total lightweight who opposes me and some of our great Republican ideas and policies just for the sake of getting his name out there through controversy,” and added, “Justin is a loser who sadly plays right into our opponents hands!” Amash’s nominal boss, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, also threw the Michigander some shade, saying he wasn’t sure “whether he’s even in our Republican conference as a whole.”
Amash hasn’t faced a primary challenge since 2014, the year he turned back a foe backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by a 57-43 margin. However, if Amash does seek re-nomination this cycle (and that looks like a very big if), he’s likely in for an extremely tough and nasty campaign. No matter what, all of this gives Democrats a good incentive to target Michigan’s 3rd District for the first time in decades. This seat went from 53-46 Romney to 52-42 Trump, but according to Bloomberg's Greg Giroux, it backed 2018 GOP gubernatorial nominee Bill Schuette by a very slim 48.6-48.2 margin, and GOP Senate nominee John James carried it by a modest 51-47.
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