The month of May will be telling.

We are about to find out whether Donald Trump maintains his death grip on the Republican Party. Or whether that grip has loosened and other voices, not fully subservient, can prosper.

Virtually every day, statements emerge from Mar-a-Lago announcing the defeated president’s “Complete and Total” endorsement of this or that Republican candidate.

From his endorsement of Sarah Palin for the Alaska congressional seat: “Wonderful patriot Sarah Palin of Alaska just announced that she is running for Congress. … Sarah is tough and smart and will never back down, and I am proud to give her my Complete and Total Endorsement.”

The man likes his capital letters.

For Colorado’s Trumpiest legislator, Trump wrote: “Congresswoman Lauren Boebert has done a fantastic job representing Colorado’s Third District. She is a fearless leader, a defender of the America First Agenda, and a fighter against Loser RINOs and Radical Democrats. She will continue to be tough on Crime, strong on Borders, and always protect our under-siege Second Amendment. Lauren has my Complete and Total Endorsement.”

So it goes. Day after day, Trump rewards his loyalists and seeks retribution against any who have questioned or doubted him. Particular scorn is reserved for those who have openly crossed him.

He regularly seeks to boost Wyoming candidate Harriet Hageman, “who is running against warmonger and disloyal Republican, Liz Cheney.” Anyone deemed too close to the Senate minority leader is guilty by association with “the old, broken-down Crow, Mitch McConnell.”

Trump is unlike all ex-presidents who came before him. Think of the graceful, precedent-setting exit of George Washington’s farewell address.

Our first president, bound by no term limit or tradition, had the selfless foresight to establish a norm of peacefully transferring power. At age 64 and ailing as his second term wound down, he worried that if he died in office his countrymen would come to see the presidency as a lifetime appointment.

In his famous words of departure, largely penned by his loyal lieutenant, Alexander Hamilton, Washington warned of a “spirit of revenge” and the rise of “cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men” who would “usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

Trump, convinced without evidence that he was robbed of his office, seeks to remain the dominant figure in his party and to keep a stranglehold over who rises and falls in its ranks.

His is less kingmaker – for in Trump’s orbit there can be but one king – than kingpin. But coming Republican primaries over the next few months will put that status to the test.

The action starts this week in Ohio where celebrated author and onetime Trump critic, J.D. Vance, received the prized “Complete and Total” endorsement after equally celebrated groveling and the sacrifice of any intellectual integrity he had left in his consummate Tucker Carlson impersonation.

But Vance faces a tough field and his nomination is not assured even with the Trump nod.

A week later, a congressional primary in Trump-loving West Virginia features two incumbents thrown together in a new district. Trump is completely, totally backing Alex Mooney while David McKinley enjoys the support of the state’s popular Republican governor.

Meanwhile, in the Nebraska primary for governor, Trump has thrown in with rancher Charles Herbster in a close race against two strong, also very conservative contenders. Herbster is the subject of eight separate allegations of sexual assault. In Trump-world, a little groping is regarded as more qualification than deal-breaker.

Come mid-May, the action shifts to North Carolina and Idaho. In the Senate race in the Tar Heel state, Trump-anointed candidate Ted Budd seems to hold a narrow lead over former governor Pat McGrory and a third candidate also from the party’s hard conservative flank.

In Idaho, a deeply divided GOP confronts a gubernatorial primary in which the incumbent Brad Little is being challenged by Janice McGeachin, his lieutenant governor. McGeachin does quite a Palin/Boebert/Taylor Greene impression and recently addressed a conference of white nationalists so, naturally, she has Trump’s support.

As the month winds down, the action will shift to the Pennsylvania Senate primary where Trump was drawn to the entertainment-obsessed, chameleon-like figure of Mehmet Oz, better known as Dr. Oz. That endorsement came only after Trump’s first candidate, Sean Parnell, withdrew following credible charges of domestic abuse. Quite the family values crew.

Turning south, the Alabama Senate primary features two strong candidates still standing after Trump rescinded his endorsement of Rep. Mo Brooks. In that case, “Complete and Total” did not account for Brooks’s weak polling and his off-script remark that it might be time, after all, to move on from the 2020 election.

Across the border in Georgia, incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp, who honorably resisted Trump’s entreaties to overturn Biden’s narrow win there in 2020, is being opposed by the Trump-endorsed David Perdue, a former U.S. senator. Kemp, perhaps second only to Liz Cheney on Trump’s hit list, seems on track to beat back the challenge.

The Wyoming primary along with that in Palin’s Alaska wait until August. By then, the verdict will be largely in on whether Trump’s control remains absolute or if it has started to wane.

If his chosen candidates lose even a few of these intra-party contests, the balloon will have been punctured. Trump will remain a dominant figure in the GOP, but not an unassailable one. Weakness will have been revealed and rivals will be emboldened.

Of course, the real storyline is that even if Trump’s clench on his party is released, what is left behind will still be quite Trumpian in nature. Those eagerly waiting to take up the mantle might present a slightly more palatable persona attached to a very Trump-like message.

As for all those candidates who contorted and prostrated themselves in search of the coveted Trump blessing and, minus Twitter, some endorsement statement with lots of capitalization, well, at some point soon, a mirror awaits.

Hang on. We are entering the most important month of Trump’s weird, obsessed, vengeful post-presidency.

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for ColoradoPolitics and the Gazette newspapers. Reach him at?EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann.