The retirement of U.S. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) on Tuesday, just before a humiliating defeat for colleagues on health care and then on defending an incumbent in Alabama, puts the Establishment of the Senate GOP majority at risk.

Corker is the first Senate Republican to hit the bricks before what could be a brutal midterm election in 2018.

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Faced with challenges from the Right in primaries, and then Democrats in November, a number of Republicans could retire before the 2018 elections.

The problem for Democrats is that 23 Democratic senators and two aligned independents are up for re-election in 2018. Only eight Republicans are up for re-election. It’s hard to win a majority when you have to defend so many seats, experts say.

Still, one Republican has already retired. The Democrats only need to pick off three of those eight seats to win a majority. The Republicans’ chaos and dysfunction within the Senate GOP caucus is being driven by their thin 52-seat (of 100) majority.

“A big part of the Senate GOP problem is how narrow their majority is,” said Eddie Zipperer, an assistant professor of political science at Georgia Military College. “They can only lose three senators if they want to pass something along party lines, and even then they can only do that through reconciliation. It is simply too easy for Democrats to be an obstructionist minority.”

But Republican voters expected the GOP Senate to be unanimous in passing health care reform and tax reform. Instead, eight months dragged on after Trump took office.

On Tuesday, the GOP Senate majority was already on thin ice. It was clear the latest attempt to repeal Obamacare — perhaps the most famous GOP pledge in recent history — was about to fail.

And, then, suddenly, that repeal did fail, not with a bang but with a whimper. The Senate GOP decided not to even bring it to the floor.

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, once a master of Senate politics and deal-making, then headed wounded into the evening with his caucus. The day’s news that McConnell wouldn’t even call a vote on the latest repeal bill, Graham-Cassidy, came as some Alabama voters were on their way to the polls.

Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), appointed to replace Jeff Sessions, was the next victim of what has been a lethargic Senate agenda. Strange was appointed earlier in the year, but the new Alabama governor decided to call a special election to test the appointment’s popularity.

Strange lost the Republican primary to Roy Moore, a former judge who was twice bounced off the Alabama Supreme Court for refusal to abide by court orders. Moore ran as a Trump loyalist, even though Strange picked up President Donald Trump’s endorsement.

In the end, it didn’t matter. Strange himself admitted, just days before the election, that the failure of Obamacare repeal was hurting him. Moore now serves the rest of Sessions and Strange’s term, which ends in 2020. While Strange is a conservative, his brief association with the GOP Establishment and McConnell was too much for angry Republicans to swallow.

“Mitch McConnell is a weak leader,” said Zipperer. “He’s unpopular at the national level. He epitomizes ‘swamp-ism.’ He’s been in Congress since the 1980s, he serves special interests and big donors. That’s the anti-zeitgeist in GOP politics right now.”

“The Strange defeat and Corker retirement are signals the Trump revolution is going strong and rebellion against GOP Establishment going strong.”

So before 2017 has ended, Trump supporters and conservatives have already thinned the Senate GOP Establishment. It’s a huge scalp for the activist base of the party, payment for the failure of McConnell to pressure moderate Republicans such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), two of the most guilty GOP parties in the failure to repeal Obamacare.

The possible bonus for Trump loyalists is that they may drive out more Establishment Republicans, nominate conservatives, and take some Democratic seats in 2018, Zipperer says, approaching 55 seats. Many of the Democrats, such as Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana, have to defend seats in states that Trump won easily.

And already, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), up for re-election in 2018, is running far behind a conservative challenger.

The Establishment has more to fear if they do not deliver to Trump, says one conservative pundit.

“The Strange defeat and Corker retirement are signals the Trump revolution is going strong and rebellion against GOP Establishment going strong,” said Jeff Lord, a former CNN analyst and Breitbart contributor. “McConnell will continue to have a problem, as he has become a symbol for all that’s a problem in GOP.”

(photo credit, homepage images: Gage Skidmore, Flickr / Judicial.alabama.gov / U.S. Embassy Moldova, Flickr; photo credit, article images: Gage Skidmore, Flickr / YouTube / U.S. Congress)