Hey, thanks for the long and thorough reply. I’m a bit overwhelmed :)
I think the reason this sounds reasonable is because a lot of the folks on the GOP campaign are longtime GOP folks, who know - or at least have certain long-held beliefs about - how this conventionally works.
This is exactly where my doubts come from. The whole piece has the air of “conventional politics“ but at the same time, from an outside perspective, it looks like the whole party has been thoroughly streamlined towards their leader in the past 8 years. And a cult of MAGA would probably not resemble much of traditional politics. It will be interesting to see if they can put a lid on it and return to politics that at the very least appears less crazy and unhinged in case Trump loses the election.
But this is not really how one wins. You need a broad coalition backing you to win - playing to a smaller base may make them feel good, but it’s not going to bring enough folks backing you to the polls on election day.
True, but who is Trump going to convince to switch sides a week before the election? You might as well turn up the rhetoric to 11 and say the quiet part out loud, in order to convince your own base to vote for you.
This is a slippery slope of course, and the outcome could either be losing people with this radicalisation or making sure even more radical people who did not plan to vote show up at the booth. And to deter people from voting for someone else, out of fear.
Also, even if it was possible for Trump to extend a hand and suddenly appear reasonable who would believe him after all that happened? I guess he doesn’t have a choice but take the route of last-minute radicalisation.
We’ll see how this turns out. Personally I am so sick of seeing the orange conman dominate public discourse worldwide for eight years in a row. It is time to move on and I can only hope the majority of Americans has had enough too.
Are you sure your Facebook friends have posted anything at all lately? Most of my contacts have left Facebook long ago (so have I) but a lot of them never deleted their accounts.