Eight years ago, Republican political hopefuls came to Mackinac Island for the state party’s biennial convention wrestling with a big question: Do they run with Donald Trump, or run away from him?

In the 2018 midterm election, the GOP faced a brilliantly executed resistance campaign by Democrats aimed at scaring masses of their own voters to the polls and flipping Republicans away from a besieged president. It worked better than they could have hoped. Republicans, including many long-standing incumbents, were wiped out up and down the ballot.

“When Trump came into office, Democrats created a firestorm that no one could turn around,” says former Congressman Mike Bishop, who was among the victims of the Democratic rout. “By the midterm, it was just too powerful to respond to. I was helples

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