Republican voters vote on the basis of 1 metric and 1 metric alone:
"Who will anger my many, many enemies the most?"
Trump is an absolute moron, and thankfully proved too inept to be effective at pushing legislation, but he does have one instinctual skill that is his superpower, spewing hateful and cruel rhetoric effortlessly, like water. It makes him giddy like a child. It made his voters giddy to witness, too.
For this reason and no other, Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee again. DeSantis just isn't as good at being a completely shameless asshole on stage.
Go wayyyyyy back and Remember the event that took Trump from having to hire extras to fill his crowd for the 2016 primary (look it up), to what made him the bar none favorite.
That's what modern republicans vote for. Not policy, they're cowards that want someone to thump their chest and attack their enemies, and the dirtier the better, everyone outside their increasingly monolithic in-group. It's practically impossibly to out Trump Trump in this regard without promising to "nuke leftist cities" if elected.
They are not dying. They are dead and lying on their backs.
If you still represent yourself with an R in this day and age, you are at minimum tacitly endorsing what the party has become. And are likely doing a lot more than tacit.
Joe Manchin's a more reliable conservative than Mitt Romney, but he still caucuses with the Dems because that still makes more sense than being with the GOP.
It’s not that they want to burn it down because they’re a dying breed. They’re trained to hate and be angry the other side and that’s all that motivates them.