Thoughts (from others) as the GOPers raise up their mad king

This does seem to require explanation. Why are Republicans so willing to rush along like metaphorical lemmings off any cliff toward which the Orange Cheeto points them? It doesn't seem like a good bet, at least for those of them with sane constituents. Yes, some have constituents more rabid than they are; but not all of them.

Jonathan Chait has an intriguing theory:

"Why would the party, and its candidates running for office at every level, define themselves so thoroughly with a president who has never even briefly held the support of half the country? 

"It is probably because Trump is so deeply and historically unpopular that his party has embraced him so tightly. The Republican Party elite harbors quiet doubts about the president’s basic competence, morality, and fitness for office. As a result, Trump feels the need to force them to make public commitments of loyalty, to place their reputations in his hands so that no escape is possible. 

"And they go along to get along. ..."

Or maybe the moral rot is even more insidious. At present, GOPers led by Trump are claiming Democrats dropped the words "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance at their convention. This is BS. There's video evidence this invocation of a Deity was repeated four times, once each day. That is, the Republicans are talking nonsense. Fred Clark thinks he knows why Trump wants Republicans endorsing his fabrication.

This isn’t a lie. He’s not trying to deceive anyone. He’s testing their loyalty by making them choose between him and their own two eyes. This is Trump asking his followers to recite a different kind of Pledge of Allegiance — a loyalty oath to him, personally, above all else, even what they know to be true. He is not trying to misinform them. He is requiring them to prefer loyalty to him above loyalty to information.

This is how contemporary autocratic populists routinely undermine their people's ability to discern what is true. Vladimir Putin's regime is rooted in this strategy, according to historian Timothy Snyder and journalist Peter Pomerantsev.

All this is not say that the Orange Cheeto is a brilliant political strategist. He's not. I think I agree with the Washington Post's Philip Bump that Trump may likely be performing a take-down on himself.

Trump’s campaign strategy in 2016 was to present everything as terrible and himself as the best solution. That meant accepting his unpopularity but emphasizing Clinton’s. It meant casting the country as teetering. 

His strategy now, weirdly, is the same. Attacks on Biden as horrifying and socialist and anarchic and doddering, all at once. Paint a picture of a nation more precarious than the one he criticized four years ago. Yet offer himself, again, as the solution. 

All of this plays into Biden’s framing. ...

The Democratic Convention was designed to remind us that our lives did not have to be in the miserable condition they are. Until Trump came along, unmasking race hate while refusing masks in a pandemic and leaving millions without jobs, the country was imperfect, but it had room for hope, and striving, and community. Heck of a job, Donnie.