This is right on target. He's not saying anything Trump hasn't said (or implied), but he's no Trump. This is the same problem ran into. They want someone that projects power and confidence, as well as acts as a surrogate on which they can project their own dark desires about how the world should be.

Trump can be all these things because he has a carefully crafted image of being super wealthy, but also (and more importantly) he's charismatic, funny, and speaks in what basically amount to parables. He very rarely comes right out and says things like "we're going to give bonus votes to people with kids." He might hint at that, or convey the same message through some kind of elliptical digression about some random topic, but he doesn't state things clearly and plainly most of the time. He jokes, teases, and plays the crowd. His rhetoric is open to interpretation, which both lets them project their own ideas onto him but also insist that he didn't really mean whatever his opponent took him to mean. With DeSantis or Vance, all that humor and rhetorical fogginess is gone, and the fascist project is laid bare. That's boring and off-putting--even to many of them who actually agree with the project--because what attracts them isn't a set of policy goals, but rather a particular image of what could be: a vibe.

There are obviously exceptions to this (people who are the Hilary Clintons of the far right and are in it for the technocratic minutiae of implementing fascism), but they're much smaller as a group than the collection of people who want to be caught up in the religious ecstasy of MAGA rallies, and will change the channel when that turns into the nitty gritty of policy. Remember that politics is fundamentally boring to most normal people. In Trump, they're getting something less like politics and more like a sermon, comedy act, and sports rally all rolled into one. So far, they haven't found anyone else able to bridge that gap.

GOOD post