You see how quickly MAGA voters went from “America first. No foreign entanglements” to “let’s send troops to the Middle East to clear out Gaza” as soon as Trump said we should do so?
Anytime that Trump hasn’t been on the ballot since 2018, Trump voters stayed home.
Presidents have always been about personality and not policy. Biden and Bush I being the exception in my lifetime - or at least since Reagan.
This is why there's an effort to centralize power in the executive at a blistering pace, so the opposition can be permanently defeated even without Trump.
Watch for three things: ignoring the courts, snuffing out the influence of non-party sources of authority (the press, academic institutions), and centralization of police power. I don't think they're going to wait past April before they do all three.
I’m not saying another Republican will never win. But they will be your bland mostly inoffensive Republicans like Haley (2024), McCain, Romney, Bush I and II and Dole.
You might disagree with them on policy around the edges. But they won’t bring the destruction of Trump.
Desantis tries his best to be Trump and he flamed out marvelously on the stage. Even in Florida (where I live), he is losing his grip on the legislature.
I worry if it goes back to business as usual, it's just ripe for the next generation of con artists to show up and we'll go through this all over again.