"Backing a winner purely because he is a winner — that I get, even if it makes me uncomfortable. But backing a loser? Carrying on with the whole MAGA obsession after 2020? That’s just downright weird. There were no Nixonians after 1974, no Carterites after 1980."
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-trump-delusion-has-finally-started-wearing-off/ar-AA144F2x?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=e064c3f1703b44f2b41f838c0cc891f9
Indeed. Turning on a loser, particularly a one-termer, is the usual thing to happen in politics. DeSantis's crushing victory in Florida, matched against Trump's own personal loss in 2020 and Trump-backed candidates' underperformance across the board in the 2022 midterms, ought to speak for itself. In a rational world, it would.
But, we're not in Kansas anymore.
The Republican Party isn't behaving much like a traditional democratic party that goes through periods of internal debate, reflection, and recalibration after suffering election setbacks. No doubt, party elites want to do that. But the MAGA base doesn't wanna.
Trump has forged this kind of primal bond with his supporters, from conditioning them to ignore scandal after scandal and election defeat after defeat (Trump staved off the stench of a loser with the big lie of massive voter fraud).
Trump always has someone to blame, always has some line he can push that feeds the MAGA base exactly what it's craving. DeSantis offers a slightly softer version of the same kind of Trumpian culture-war combativeness, but he doesn't get as nasty. As strong as DeSantis looked just a few days ago, I think Trump strong-arms the GOP back onto his side, like he's done so many times before.
More about all that here
imgflip.com/i/70nul1
