I think we really underestimated the role off culture in all of this. Back when Newt and company were accelerating the GOP’s dive into the extreme right-wing, conspiracy-fueled, paranoid dystopia sphere, Democrats and even moderate Republicans and independents kept pointing to empirical data on economics, foreign policy, crime, whatever to try and frame political discourse along what they saw as “normal” lines, lines based on what was actually going on. Over the years, this has continued; 2016 showed this, as Trump’s chances were dismissed because objectively his arguments made no sense and the perception of the world he had was not rooted in reality.
But none of that really matters, does it? What matters is that a large chunk of the population is willing to ignore everything other than their fear of cultural erosion. When you have people loudly proclaiming that the USA is a Christian country where the church broadly speaking is the state, where you have people openly depicting people of color as outside the boundaries of what they consider to be America, where people are willing to roll back individual reproductive rights and freedoms to 19th century levels, where political parties effectively argue that thee only legitimate vote is a vote for them because the other side is manifestly non-American–this stuff cannot be countered by logic or reason. It is pure culture war, and the majority of the voters seem to not understand this even now.
There is no arguing with the GOP at this point. About the only possible tactic that will work is getting enough people to vote against every Republican candidate possible that it becomes impossible to fudge the election results. Instead, the Democrats split on different lines like age, race, income, religion, you name it. When one side is operating with the traditional system off arguing out meaningful policy positions under the assumption that all the players are working under the same assumptions, and the other side is playing by a whole different set off rules, things are not going to work well.
And it is much, much easier to get people fired up over abortion, gender identity, race, religion, and self image issues than it is to get them fired up over economic policy, diplomatic initiatives, or nuanced educational reform. The GOP is refusing to abandon their positions and Trump precisely because those positions and Trump are utterly insane. They are literally inarguable, and thus fit perfectly into the strategy of riling up cultural fears to the level that anything becomes justified.
Personally, I think most of the leaders in the GOP are just mendacious evil people who will do anything for power. But some of them I think are also true believers in a fascist theocracy governed by a warped interpretation of Protestant Christianity and a very traditional if virulent form of white supremacy, with a dollop of hypocritical sexual moralizing thrown in for good Freudian measure.
