Ryan's Big Primary Win Suggests Trumpism Is More of a Personality Cult Than a Movement

House speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin crushed his GOP primary opponent Paul Nehlen Tuesday by nearly 70 points. With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Ryan led Nehlen 84 percent to 16 percent.

Nehlen ran as an anti-establishment Trumpist candidate outraged by free trade and "open borders" immigration policy. He bragged about his business acumen and flexed his tattooed biceps in a video challenging Paul Ryan to an arm-wrestling match. He said we should consider deporting all Muslims from the United States. Nehlen won the support of pro-Trump media figures like Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, and Breitbart News. Trump himself went out of his way last week to decline to endorse Ryan. (Then a poll came out showing Ryan ahead by 66 points, and Trump begrudgingly read a statement endorsing Ryan at a rally Friday night in Green Bay.)

Ryan's victory isn't surprising, but the size of Nehlen's loss suggests that Trumpism without Trump is just not all that popular in a Republican primary.

If Trumpism were a full-fledged movement, a Trumpist candidate should have been able to crack at least 30 percent in a congressional district that recently lost a GM plant. Trump himself garnered 32 percent in Ryan's blue-collar district during Wisconsin's presidential primary, when another anti-establishment candidate, Ted Cruz, won the district by 19 points.

If Trumpism were a full-fledged movement, a Trump acolyte should have defeated at least one establishment Republican House or Senate candidate somewhere—anywhere—this year. But that hasn't happened. Not yet, anyway.