On the other hand, the popular power of the GOP is currently concentrated around a single person, someone who is also the oldest person to ever start a presidential term, and who does not lead a particularly healthy lifestyle. There is every chance that "What will Trump do during the 2028 election?" will be a question resolved by time and nature.
There is no one waiting in the wings to take over popularly if this happens. Previous people who have at various times looked like they might, have fallen mightily from grace in the eyes of the party, such as DeSantis.
It all falls apart without Trump. And Trump is an old man, doing a stressful job.
The confusing thing about this is that Trump himself isn't the problem when it comes to actual policy. The Project 2025 stuff is not from Trump's head. He has nowhere near enough domain knowledge to build a policy document like that.
The current problem is that Trump is happy to implement the policies that all these hard-right lunatics have come up with. It's not like Trump writes those executive orders. He just agrees with them and signs them.
Certainly Trump is a problem. He's the one that has united the party around this horrifying agenda, and who is amenable to letting others like Musk dismantle the federal government. The question, after Trump is gone, is if there is anyone else that can motivate the party to vote for someone who will continue to do things The Trump Way (that is, let other, smarter people do things).
I don't know. Like you say, people like DeSantis seemed to have a shot for a bit, but they've fallen out of favor. But it's unclear if these people need another Trump, or if someone with even half of his weird... charisma... will do.
(All of this is of course the standard hypocrisy: Trump and his cronies run on the whole "drain the swamp", "eliminate the deep state" nonsense. But of course Trump just immediately installs a different unelected deep state to run things.)
> The question, after Trump is gone, is if there is anyone else that can motivate the party to vote for someone who will continue to do things The Trump Way (that is, let other, smarter people do things).
And I think the answer is no.
You're correct, that none of the policy being pushed through comes from Trump. It comes from various other people who are using Trump as a vehicle for their legislation.
But that doesn't really matter, because Trump didn't run on policy. He ran on force of personality.
I don't think anyone else will be able to strike quite the same balance Trump does, once he's gone. They'll either lean too hard into the policy stuff, which will backfire, or they'll lean too hard into the personality stuff, which leads to broadly unpopular people like Marjorie Taylor Green.
I think the only reason that Trump was/is as successful as he is, is that he has spent literal decades being in the news for something-or-other. By having headlines about him pop up every so often since the 1980s, he managed to engrain himself into the public consciousness in a way that let him then win the 2016 election, and everything since then.
Without that history, the immediate name recognition by everyone, I don't think the 2016 primary would have looked remotely like it did. And I don't think there's anyone else with that institutional name recognition waiting in the wings.
There is no one waiting in the wings to take over popularly if this happens. Previous people who have at various times looked like they might, have fallen mightily from grace in the eyes of the party, such as DeSantis.
It all falls apart without Trump. And Trump is an old man, doing a stressful job.