I'm genuinely curious what will happen to the GQP when trump dies, no matter what the reason is.
There's lots of talk about how someone worse would step in and take his place, but I can't help but notice that every "replacement" that has been put forward (like Desantis) is made fun of and rejected by the rightoids.
There are people now who have made "trump supporter" their personality. Those are the people who still vote for him, those are the people all the other conservative weirdos are trying to court for votes. So what happens when he dies?
Maybe one of his sons would take over? It's hard to imagine the MAGA crew moving on. Even people Trump explicitly endorses don't always seem to get their full support...
Eh, they'll probably just call the obituary 'fake news' and try to elect his corpse into office.
Even people Trump explicitly endorses don't always seem to get their full support...
That right there is the issue. There are of course two ways that the former president could leave this world - suddenly, or over a period of time. Does he spend two weeks slowly getting worse, giving The Apparatus time to make plans, or does he fall over dead one night facedown in his chicky nuggies?
Either way the "supporters" will get mad and loud and threaten violence but... I'm not as worried about that as I used to be. I live in a deep red state that went 85%-90% to trump in 2020. I know many of the people who support him. Remember that middle-aged couple in 2020 that were waving guns around in front of their mcmansion to protect themselves from "protesters" that were nowhere near them? That's a pretty typical template. If there were actual people in the area doing actual harm they would be hiding inside behind locked doors.
Nobody is going to rise up when he dies. They'll scream and cry and blame gay people, and they will continue to do so until the Next Thing distracts them.