Really? If Trump came out tomorrow and said he wanted to ban all AR-15s, you don't think most Republican voters would still stand with him? They most certainly would.
Your Covid example actually proves my point -- a lot of MAGA voters did not like it when Trump promoted and advocated for the Covid vaccine. However, Trump still easily won the 2024 Republican Presidential nomination, didn't he?
In the case of the vaccine - an 'issue' with virtually no prior roots in conservative or rightwing ideologies - many of his supporters did
not turn around to agree with his position and even actively booed him on it (even if they eventually still supported him in general terms as nominee). How do you figure that proves the point that most of them
would turn around to agree with him on other much more entrenched issues?
It's a non-starter in any case, because we're imagining a scenario in which Trump develops the spine to oppose some core value of his base, even though he himself has no solid values to motivate such a decision.
You're agreeing with me in this paragraph. You are basically saying that Republican voters no longer care about policy. That is true.
That's not what I'm saying. To grossly over-generalize, I don't think that they ever cared about policy as such, or principles. Politics is driven to a greater or lesser extent by the feelings, appearance and rhetoric around an issue, by a kind of narrative in other words. The narrative generally motivating conservative, evangelical and MAGA voters consists of imagining some kind of idealized aspects of society/s ranging from 40 to 4000 years ago, golden-age mythologizing of the bible, the 'founding fathers,' the post-war baby boom and so on. That's associated with tendencies or themes such as male chauvinism, white chauvinism, nationalism, hierarchy and authoritarianism. Is male chauvinism more common among conservatives because they are exposed to quasi-historic golden-age mythologies, or are they drawn to quasi-historic golden-age mythologies because they are more commonly chauvinistic? Probably a bit of both I'd guess, though I imagine the former (nurture) is more impactful than the latter.
The particular public-facing policies and principles of conservatism in turn need to reflect or appeal to or cynically exploit those deeper themes or tendencies, but it's not the policies themselves that really matter: So for example 'law and order' rhetoric in part appeals to tendencies towards hierarchy and white chauvinism, its associated policies used disproportionately against poor and marginalized groups... but that means that when rich white men get away with fraud, tax evasion or treason it's a case of hypocrisy or contradiction against the
rhetoric, but still wholly consistent with the underlying tendencies behind that rhetoric. Similarly as I suggested earlier 'family values' or sexual puritanism rhetoric or policies appeal to tendencies towards male chauvinism, wanting to have men and women in their 'rightful' places... but while support for a *****-grabbing adulterer is obviously wildly contradictory to that rhetoric, it's broadly consistent with the underlying chauvinistic tendencies. Whether the 'golden age' in view is Solomon with his 700 concubines or a 1950s boss groping his secretary, Trump's misogynistic sexual behaviour isn't really out of place from the narratives behind conservative politics.
As many have noted with regards to his fairly open white chauvinist rhetoric, he didn't fundamentally change anything about the Republican base, he just made it more acceptable in certain circles to say the quiet parts out loud. I think that's pretty generally true across the board; he hasn't changed the
real Republican values, he's just reflected and amplified the tendencies behind them.
The Republican Party has been headed towards authoritarianism for a long time, especially since the racist Tea Party movement started back in 2009. However, the Tea Party movement did not promote loyalty to one man. That is a new phenomenon that started with Trump.
Exactly
Authoritarianism always been there. Trump has obviously developed a strong cult of personality as the (partly crafted, partly natural) personification of many of those tendencies, but Trump himself isn't that special; he must have some kind of charisma, obviously, but nothing that could explain this cult of personality on its own, so my point is that (disagreeing with the article in the OP) those tendencies don't depend on Trump and (disagreeing with you) they couldn't be reversed by him even if he were inclined to try. At most he might exploit and direct them in some vaguely tangential fashion; but if he really and clearly went against them, his supporters would turn on him almost as readily as he turns on anyone who stands in his way.
