I think Trump is, and HAS BEEN, devastating to the GOP. Trump affiliated candidates have underperformed expectations in 2018, 2020, and now 2022. He is an albatross around their neck. His base is too fervent and too dedicated to ignore, and as such is a HUUUGE problem for competent, rational Republicans because they can win primaries for the loons. Yet, if you play to them, the main body of the electorate won’t tolerate it.
If Trump runs, and I think there’s a better than fair chance he will, he will bloody DeSantis and turn the nomination into a circus, which is how he won it in 2016. He treated it like his reality show, which made the media cover it nonstop, effectively giving him free advertising because the GOP resents the leftward slant of the media…so them going negative on him just fuels their anti-establishmentarian impulses.
If he runs, I think there’s a VERY real chance he wins that primary because primaries are terrible ways to filter down candidates. Only party extremists vote in primaries. Most people don’t care. Swing voters, independents, members of the other party…they’re often not even ALLOWED to vote as many states have closed primaries, but even if they were all open, most voters don’t pay attention until the general election. This allows nuts like Bernie and Trump to outpeform how they would truly perform in a general elections.
So I think there’s a very serious chance he could win the GOP nomination, but I think there’s ZERO change he could win another general election after the way he ended 2020. The Dems could run just about anybody and beat him in a landslide. And that’s a problem because the Democrats also have alot of bad candidates that are popular with their extreme wing. But they would all beat Trump at this point.
To date, voters have been pretty smart about splitting tickets to vote against Trump and Trumpy candidates, but FOR other GOP candidates. They did this in 2020 and 2022. But the GOP should not keep expecting that outcome. They’re wrecking their brand.