politics

Republicans are more authoritarian on average, and authoritarians tend to value in-group cohesion more than anything else. They are, by some reasonable metrics, bad people.

If I remember correctly, there was a study where they did like a model UN, and they secretly put all the people who scored high on authoritarian personality tests in group A, and everyone else in group B. Group B did fine- no wars, dealt with climate change and what not. Group A, with the authoritarians, caused a nuclear apocalypse. And after they got a do-over (after they had to sit in silence for a few minutes to think about what they'd done), they still fucked it up. edit: I found it: https://theauthoritarians.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/TheAuthoritarians.pdf , page 30

We're all at least a little susceptible to authoritarian, in-group-above-all thinking. But some people have it bad, and those people suck. They're really ruining it for the rest of us.

Why? Because their loyalist devoted followers are dumb as fucking bricks and believe everthing they say.

Fascism, the answer is fascism

They could both shit in each other's mouths on live TV and it wouldn't sway a single one of their base.

Because that’s how Hitler did it

i'm convince that liberals and conservatives alike only go by what their in-group says and they become leftists and independents once they spend more than the average amount of effort to scratch beyond the surface.

gish gallop

The Gish gallop (/ˈɡɪʃ ˈɡæləp/) is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm an opponent by presenting an excessive number of arguments, with no regard for their accuracy or strength, with a rapidity that makes it impossible for the opponent to address them in the time available. Gish galloping prioritizes the quantity of the galloper's arguments at the expense of their quality.

The answer is twofold: both like to bath in the media attention, and a crazy invented story simply draws more of that than simple facts. And both have no real arguments speaking for them. This election is about Trump, not about any political issues or problems that need to be solved.

Why Trump and Vance’s strategy is ‘say anything, make up anything’

Because their supporters don't fact check anything and hear only what they want. That's it. It's that simple.

Their strategy is:

Step 1: Lie bigly

Step 2: double down

Step 3: triple down

Step 4: move on to a new lie, back to step 1

Bonus: insult more and more people with every repeated cycle

They don't really know any other way. Its not like they are smart enough to learn anything other than the bare minimum.

Looking like Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dee in their matching outfits.

As soon as Bill Clinton took office the GOP was on him 24/7 with all kinds of ridiculous accusations. "Travelgate" was supposed to be an important problem, as was the death of Vince Foster. They actually shot themselves in the foot, because if they hadn't been so blatant they might have managed to make the Monica scandal stick. But impeachment aside, I realize now that what they were doing was muddying the waters to make other people less likely to want to run, and to make regular voters sick of politics.

Because they're ethically and morally bankrupt?

This is their strategy because these are the pieces of human crap they are.

@MicroWave

this is probably not true

eg, read the best thing, IMO, written on 2016, then think about how often liberals talk about trump's plan to cut taxes on working people [ "plan" of course being BS ]

don't wanna read the link ?
Tl;dr
Trump supporters didn't pay attn to the crazy stuff; they just hear him say: When I am POTUS there will be jobs
thats it, thats the mesagge

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/12/6/13853314/trump-speeches-lessons-democrats-economics-trade