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Notes -
Another interesting aspect of the Speaker fight has been an additional datapoint on Trump's slowly eroding influence. Trump has explicitly backed McCarthy, and while Trump's endorsement had once been enough to clear state-level Republican primaries to get his preferred candidates to the general election, it hasn't done much in this fight. Indeed, Boebert and Gaetz have been openly flounting Trump's wishes, with Boebert confirming that Trump had called her and told her to "knock it off", to which she replied in a floor speech that she thought Trump should tell McCarthy that he doesn't have the votes.
Trump has been unique in his ability to survive scandals that would otherwise sink mainstream politicians, with it becoming almost a parody that many political prognosticators constantly said Trump was doomed, only for him to float along like nothing happened after a week or so. But I think this caused many people to overlearn about Trump's resilience into essentially thinking he's invincible. In reality, Trump's clout within the GOP and the nation have been declining slowly but consistently. The high point was obviously the 2016 election, but he suffered a minor-to-moderate defeat in the 2018 midterms before being rejected by the country as a whole in 2020, and now it looks like he's slowly being rejected by the Republicans as well; not just the establishment (which has always kind of hated him) but even the far right is looking for other options. Smart money now thinks Desantis is about twice as likely to win the R nomination in 2024 than Trump after Trump's candidates arguably cost Republicans the Senate chamber.
Somehow, some people still thinking that Trump supporters support Trump because he charmed them with some kind of magic spell and they listened to his MAGA siren song and became MAGA themselves. But this is the exact opposite of the truth - Trump got popular because he tapped in and became the focus point of unsatisfied need in the American politics. But then he departs from that point, his influence diminishes. When he is ineffective in serving those needs, his influence diminishes. I wouldn't go as far as proclaim he's beatable in 2024R, my personal opinion he is still going to win (and for DeSantis would be smart to sit this one out entirely). But his decline in popularity, I think, is in direct relation to his inability to efficiently govern and deliver on his promises. He has only two ways to go here: either invent some new way to deliver, that he haven't tried before, and somehow convince a lot of people that it's going to be different this time, or ride a slow decline of his popularity into an eventual political oblivion (or the position of a political commentator on TV).
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