“Also important here: losing political parties in mass-democratic polities tend to double down and become more extreme for the next time around. The Democrats lost in 1968 and nominated George McGovern in 1972. They had to lose even worse before finally figuring out that they needed to head toward the center to win. So in 1976, they nominated a Southern moderate—Jimmy Carter—and won.

Republicans lost in 2020, but their reaction was to double-down, become more extreme, and get behind Trump’s “Stolen Election” narrative. Trump is thus the preeminent symbol of the GOP’s post-2020 lurch toward the crazy surrealist Right. That is partly why he maintains his status as party leader: he justifies in the minds of MAGA ideologues that becoming more extreme was the right thing to do.”