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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?
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