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What is the steelman for voting for Trump in the primaries?
He's not a true outsider anymore. He's not an unknown quantity. We know his temperament. We know his governance style. What does he provide over Desantis/Haley/Ramaswamy? He didn't build the wall the first time, why would he do it now?
I have some ideas, but they're all terrible once you think about them for ten seconds. I am willing to believe that the median voter is unable to think clearly for ten seconds before being hijacked by monkey-brain, but I'd like to make sure I'm not missing something obvious.
1. Personal Loyalty: This is close to the Richard Hanania theory. Personal loyalty would make sense if Trump was loyal in turn to his supporters, but he isn't. How many of his lawyers have gone to jail? How many orange-blooded Trump fans lost their jobs or got arrested for believing in him too hard on January 6? He could have pardoned these people, but he didn't. Orange Man good because Orange Man good.
2. Perceived Injustice: Yes, Trump has been treated unfairly by the media and the Washington establishment. Lots of people have been. I can understand why this would be seen as a necessary condition (e.g. "nobody liked by the 'elites' could ever be a good president"), but why would this be a sufficient condition? Surely electability and general competence matter more than an extra standard-deviation worth of grievances against the media.
3. Hatred: I'm not talking about "Hate™". I'm talking about a genuine desire to see one's political enemies suffer. It's not even clear to me that Trump would be better at this than other Republican candidates, but I feel I would be missing something if I didn't put it on the list.
I can tell you the honest perception of my in-laws, is simply that Trump did a very good job as president the first time, and would have 'gotten the job done' if he had a second term.
They believe that he did build the wall, and did deliver on every other promise. Even arguments that he tried to deliver on X but the deep state stopped him, have been met with an insistance that he did deliver and that he will be smarter against the deep state this time around. There's no hatred here, there is percieved in justice, but that's not the driving force for them, and you could call it personal loyalty, to a degree but in their minds it's loyalty to a job well done. My in-laws beleive that Trump delivered a great first term and that the following are true: Trump:
Some of those things are more true than others. But to answer your question, I think some of voting for Trump is simply believing he was a known, great president, and while I think that's wrong, it doesn't need a completely different explanation.
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