They are playing a game to win the electoral college, expect if it were popular vote they would play a different game with different policies
Right, and that different game would look nothing like the current Republican Party, hence why it’s a totally fair statement to say that the Republican Party as we know it today would never stay in power in such a system. They’d have to change, and that change would probably make them look a lot more like Democrats.
Put differently, the current politics and policies of the Republican Party only yield electable candidates in a country that gives outsized power to rural voters.