[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Flasch186

Trump's immediate launching of a 2024 campaign is truly a scary prospect for those of the populace looking to fill the hole in their hearts and minds with conspiracies. You thought Pizzagate and Wayfair were a touchstone, a somewhat normal/not super far acquaintance of mine posted, #notmypedophile on Facebook the other day.... of course within 6 months of stating how Trump, as President, is being disrespectfully treated and any President should not be.

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

Thinking of this solely from the perspective of GOP presidential hopefuls:

In 2016, things sort of made sense from a game theory perspective for any individual candidate

(1) You thought that there was just no way that Trump would actually win the nomination; and

(2) it made sense for you to hold your fire on Trump as long as possible b/c you wanted his supporters to turn against the other candidates and come into your camp once Trump went down

(It was sort of the opposite of the Dems all coalescing around Biden once it looked like Bernie had a shot)

So you can see how that ended up leading to Trump in a collective action failure sort of way

But now 2024 is coming. And you know that the guy can win. And you know if no one goes after him, he will get the nomination that you want. You have a lot more information than you did in 2016.

So how does it not make sense for the Rubios, Cruzes, etc. to all have a meeting where they agree to take Trump out at the knees pretty soon so that they actually have a shot at the nomination in 2024?

This is where I'm really concerned about Parler (or something else) and OANN (or something else) becoming the "safe spaces" for much of the right. My 2015 Rubio-ish R friends aren't going to those places...yet. But the 2015 Cruz and farther right ones most certainly are--even some who didn't vote for Trump in 2020. The latter group agrees that Trump is a scumbag, but also believes that big tech and the mainstream media want to silence conservative voices, and that's why they're heading to those places. If that large of a percentage of the right ends up getting the bulk of their political information from a completely unchecked conspiracy theory echo chamber, it's seems to me only a matter of time before it becomes impossible for a Republican politician to win a primary at any level without embracing whatever nonsense is in vogue at Parler/OANN/whatever. And we know that Trump will embrace the worst level of fact-free nonsense.