I think, I have identified Trump's biggest political nemesis.

[cab67]

9. it's starting to really hamstring Republicans.

Politicians always have to walk a tightrope between the primary and general elections. The base is always somewhat further to the right or left than the party as a whole, but they're more likely to vote in the primaries, so candidates usually try to appeal to the base for the primary and then moderate their positions a bit for the general election.

The Republican base has been moving further and further to the right since Nixon. This worked well (especially between around 1990 and 2012), but by now, it's so far to the right that moderation for the general election is very hard.

They're stuck between a rock and a hard place. They can't win their primaries without the base, but they have a much harder time winning general elections with it. I think this is part of what caused their collapse in the 2018 midterms.

For those of us who like schadenfreude, it's actually gratifying to see.