In reply to: Sen. Todd Young of Indiana will not vote for Trump posted by sprack
...the old saying that "politics is a game of addition, not subtraction" is still pretty much true. Of course, in a truly authoritarian state where you suppress those who are subtracted, the saying is meaningless. Maybe that's part of what Trump et al. are shooting for.
But I don't see how it helps him with anyone else, particularly independents.
And if he loses another election, I sure don't see how that helps outside of MAGA who worship him like God.
Trump needs to improve from 2020. Every one of his educated voters who calls it quits is another voter he needs to poach from Biden or turn out.
I'm hoping Haley does something similar and Romney actually endorses Biden. Trump did poorly in the suburbs in 2020 but he can do even worse in 2024.
It has taken 4 years, but the cracks are widening, and Trump has fully plundered the GOP. It is clear that a lot of people were able to hold their noses and vote for Trump over the last eight years. They did so for mainly two reasons, they believed he could move most of their agenda forward (fiscal or social conservative) and he filled the war chests for elections. There were a lot of Republicans who could tie themselves into logical knots to still back Trump as long as he could get them enough money (and angry/scared voters) to win their next election.
Now that the Trump Crime Family has taken over the full apparatus of the GOP, the scales are starting to fall off the eyes of those willing to see that they will get no help in their down-ticket elections. Now add in the fact that even some number of Republican voters have stated they won't vote for MAGA (and it's even worse numbers for Independent voters) and it might get to the point where Trump will have to dig deep to find a VP candidate to the point that it wouldn't surprise me if he just named one of his kids as his VP candidate.