Something that always bothers me during election time, even in leftist spaces, is the lack of any discussion of direct election tampering. In addition to voter suppression and gerrymandering and such, we know electronic voting machines are seemingly designed for the purpose of tampering, and the dem primaries were blatantly rigged with shitty apps, coin flips, and "rouding errors" that somehow all went for establishment candidates. So, are we really sure any vote totals are legit, or is it a giant psy-op whose results are tailored to produce the preferred political climate for capital?
Which isn't going to happen. Friedman isn't the only one saying that. Even Biden himself thinks that Republicans will "come back to their senses" with Trump gone, and I see a lot of liberals that are true believers in this.
The Republican party has not been "normal" for many decades. It hasn't been normal for a single day throughout my entire life (born in 92). They were bat shit fucking crazy back in the 2000s in the last era of the original neocons, and this was before the Tea Party who were even more radical.
None of them see that Trump really is the endgame result of the Tea Party. They sprung up out of nowhere and completely dominated 2010 midterms. The GOP basically had to accept them and they embraced the Tea Party people once they realized that it was their best shot of getting back into power and saw how they were dominating elections.
Conservatives started rejecting the older Republicans around 2010-2013 and even earlier. They grew to hate John McCain who just barely survived the Tea Party's onslaught and fact remains, they never really liked Mitt Romney all that much. Liberals are so fucking delusional when they talk about how amazing George W Bush is as if he holds some power over conservative voters. Talk to them, they don't like Bush. They got sick of him the minute he left office and they aren't nostalgic for him.
The "never Trump" Republicans are a myth created by the liberal media. He currently holds a 94% approval rating making him the most popular Republican president since Ronald Reagan and that approval rating has been over 90% since his inauguration. The anti-Trump republicans all have media jobs and are a vocal minority, but they are so few that they don't represent the majority of conservative voters.