Well Desantis kind of blew his shot at the brass ring by biting the Mouse that feeds, but I get what you mean - there are certainly smarter people who are paying attention to the political zeitgeist who can ride that populism and know how to seize the levers of power with it. In particular I'm worried about a police force that leans rightwing and has been getting drip fed the runoff from the MIC for the last several decades.

This is me tinfoil hatting here, but I think part of the reason that the old guard republicans fall in line with the new alt-righters so easily is because they both know about all the shit that goes on behind closed doors and that if one sinks, they all go down. People easily forget that way back during the 2016 elections, Russia got into the RNC servers right alongside the DNC and while everyone was yelling about the DNC leaked files, suddenly lots of Republicans were loathe to talk about Donald's blatant ties and they all got right behind him as the nominee. The eight Republican senators' visit in 2018, on the 4th of July no less, to Kremlin officials to "foster relations with the Russian government" when the investigation into Russian interference was in full swing. The fact that alt-right Congressmen led a tour of government buildings days before Jan 6. And they all tried to downplay just how fucking close we came to a successful coup. Had Pence gotten in that car and left the building, I think the experiment would have been over, and the only reason he didn't was probably because he thought he was going to get Epstein'd - I don't care what he says about Trump now, they were chanting 'Hang Mike Pence' outside and he was shitting himself, and he knows how quickly they'll eat their own. All the driver would have had to do would be to drive towards the crowd and unlock the doors. I don't believe for a second he's got America's best interests at heart. But his fear nonetheless kept the transfer of power intact, even if now we can no longer count on it being peaceful.