Many observers were mystified when Donald Trump attacked New Mexico Republican Gov. Susana Martinez. But the story was really very simple: Martinez hit Trump, so Trump hit back. Especially now that Trump is the GOP’s presumptive nominee, he attempted to make an example of a Republican who won’t get with the program. It might work, or it might not, but from Trump’s perspective it’s the tactic he used to beat 15 rivals for the GOP nomination.

The Trump-Martinez bewilderment focused on four factors: Martinez is Hispanic, she’s a woman, she’s a Republican (head of the Republican Governors Association), and she’s popular. Trump ignored all those concerns. Campaign manager Corey Lewandowski explained that Trump’s remarks about Martinez at a May 24 rally in Albuquerque was simply a continuation of his habit of discussing economic problems wherever he travels.

It’s true. Trump has pointed to economic problems in state after state. But he has no more Republican rivals to defeat now, and he is trying to consolidate GOP support. And there are those problems with Hispanic and women voters. So why go on the offensive?

To Trump, there was something more important at work. “(Martinez) continues to attack him publicly and privately,” one person in TrumpWorld told me recently. Trump has made a principle of hitting back harder than he is hit. And he has been so effective that many Republicans, elected and not, have decided the smart thing is to refrain from taking on Trump, even if they oppose him. Not Martinez. In mid-April, the New Mexico governor issued a “remarkably strong rebuke” to Trump, in the words of a Washington Post report, when Martinez spoke to a GOP fundraiser at the home of David Koch in Palm Beach, Florida. Team Trump believes Martinez has continued to criticize him in private since those remarks. And when Trump traveled to Albuquerque, after having clinched the Republican nomination, Martinez told reporters she was “really busy” and did not have time to attend.

So Trump slammed Martinez for, among other things, the state of the economy and a rise in food stamp usage in New Mexico.

“There was no attack on a Latino or a woman governor,” Lewandowski said on Fox. “What this was, was laying out the economic perspective of what the state of New Mexico was doing, and he’s saying we need to do a better job.”

Perhaps Martinez will change her tone after Trump wins New Mexico’s primary on June 7. Perhaps not. As far as Trump is concerned, attacking Martinez, to the (unknown) degree that it angers Hispanic voters in general, could affect his fortunes far outside the boundaries of New Mexico. But Trump apparently felt it was more important now to crack down on Republican resistance, at least on GOP politicos who openly attack him, than it was to ignore Martinez’s opposition.

It’s not the way things are done these days. But the person in TrumpWorld looked back to a time when powerful party bosses would occasionally make an example of an off-the-reservation official just to inspire others to stay in line. That’s still necessary, the person said, and that’s what Donald Trump is doing.

© 2016, Universal