Quote:
Originally Posted by nfotiu
I can't see that happening as long as there are primaries.
A strong majority of Republican voters will pick the most the most depraved, deplorable candidate every time even if hurts their chances of winning.
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Yeah, we've seen this in conservative movements in a lot of places, including Canada and Alberta. When faced with the choice between moderating toward the middle or courting the extreme, a conservative movement frequently divides into two factions (either formally or informally): the fringe who care more about ideology than power, and the establishment, who only care about power. Ultimately, what we tend to see is that the establishment will always sell out to the fringe because they can't win without them. (This can happen on the left as well, but is far more common on the right for reasons inherent to differences between left and right-wing politics.)
These calculations get pretty complex in the US if the demographics shift such that MAGA-style politics become unwinnable on a national level. I remember how after Romney's defeat, the Republicans, already divided into the establishment and the Tea Party movement, did a postmortum about how they needed to moderate towards the middle or they would lose for generations... and then Trump emerged, the Tea Partiers dove wholly into that, and the establishment had no choice but to follow. Trump unlocked a group of low-likelihood voters who allowed establishment Republicans to convince themselves that they didn't need to move to the middle to win national elections.
In a post-Trump era, the vast majority of Republican politicians will still benefit from MAGA-style politics. Go away from that, and they lose most of the MAGA voters, without gaining those centrist voters who still associate the Republican brand with Trump. So on an individual level, it's still going to be the best strategy for any red or purple state politician. This makes a really tough path to get a presidential candidate through the primaries and able to thread that line between keeping the MAGA voters engaged, and courting enough centrist voters to make up for the demographic drop-off they'll be faced with.