I don't like this.
Trump moving out further to the right and to extremes just makes it easier for the rest of the GOP to disavow him and distance themselves.
Rather would've seen Trump go down together with the established party elements. Trump will be seen as a historically bad candidate and campaign in the future, so the further someone gets away from him now, the better. Moves like this will make it easier for the GOP to do just that, they'll be able to bounce back quicker.
Depends what you mean by the GOP exactly. If you mean the politicians, the people like Reince Priebus, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell, then yeah,
they all definitely realize that and that things need to change if they actually want a Republican to have a shot at the Presidency. But then again, they realized the same thing in 2012 after Romney lost, and they put out the postmortem on that but yet we got Trump.
Which leads into how if you don't mean the establishment GOP, but the GOP that actually seems the matter for these things, the actual
base of the GOP (that is, the people that actually vote for them, especially in presidential primaries), that's a completely different story. These people
want someone like Trump as President. And on top of that, Trump's already been sewing the seeds that if he loses, it's not only the fault of Hillary Clinton and the media, but also on establishment politician figures like Priebus, Ryan, and McConnell for not doing enough to back him and essentially stabbing him in the back in that sense, and they've been very receptive to that message. If Trump doubles down on that kind of messaging, which is what this suggests, that will only become more true and if Trump loses they'll be convinced those people had a part in it and thus won't exactly be looking to flock back to them in four years.
Of course, four years is a lifetime in politics and a lot can change between now and then. But if Trump continues to pander to the extreme fringes and focus on the message that the system is rigged and the only solution is an outsider figure such as himself, and by all indications the idea that the only way Hillary can win is if the system is somehow rigged does seem to be resonating in the GOP, then I don't see how that voting base will decide to flock back to a traditional, establishment political figure in 2020, but we'll see.
But yeah, that aside I do agree that this isn't exactly something I like even if it does help Trump to continue to sink because of the reasoning that Maledict laid out here:
The problem is, he is having a hugely negative effect on the country right now. We keep hearing stories about what effect this is having on children in schools - and this is going to make it worse. It was amusing at the start but now it's just toxic and damaging.
