I think this Axios article may give too much credit to the masters of MAGA:
“Double down”: Trump’s base sees ultra-MAGA as answer to GOP stumbles
Confronted with a growing string of GOP underperformances in off-year elections, key pro-Trump activists see more MAGA — not less — as the only solution.
Why it matters: The reaction suggests a movement uninterested in grappling with the limits of its appeal — a departure from the panicked introspection both parties have traditionally undergone after off-year disappointments.
Two observations:
- True believers have the arrogance to believe themselves in possession of absolute truth, and consequently compromise is evil. This pushes MAGA leaders, and some of the base, into blaming past failures on insufficient purity – a sure path to Hell, for those of us with a religious bent.
- The leaders of MAGA have been, for the most part, extreme figures excluded from real power & prestige until their entry into MAGA. If MAGA moves towards more acceptable positions, they lost power. I don’t seem them permitting such an attack on their position – they’ll gamble they can get enough of the country to accept them. What do they personally have to lose? Very little. Sure, they might still lose their power if they gamble on moving the country, but the alternative of becoming more reasonable puts their positions at risk.
These two thoughts will better describe how the MAGA leadership will careen into a flaming abyss of terminal obscurity.
[h/t Daily Kos‘ Greg Dworkin, from whom I grabbed this as I don’t care to give Axios my email address.]
