In taking the loyalty oath to support the party nominee in order to be permitted to participate in debates, the Republican candidates have transformed themselves into zombies. For one brief shining moment they may have imagined that they would edge out Donald Trump by offering themselves as more electable. But electability is a transient quality, often glittering like fool’s gold. Their unique selling proposition was that they did not carry his wagon train of baggage. Their logic was not more complicated than that. They promised that electability would be a pragmatic turn to reality. But the appeal of a rational idea that seeks a rational response immediately separated them from the Trump base. With Trump leading in the polls, and the latest poll showing him momentarily ahead of President Biden in key swing states, the electability gambit has evaporated on the ground of its premise.
Beyond the misplaced gamble on evanescent electability, accepting that Trump’s negatives might be a burden in a general election would crack the entire edifice of his mythology. If it were true, it would mean that the whole Trump storyline the base has embraced is false. From his branding in The Apprentice as a master of the universe to the big lie, the greatest con in American history would collapse. Rejecting the fable would demand of his followers that they recognize their own fallibility and gullibility. But they mirror their hero in associating self-reflection as a trait of their cultural elite enemies. To shake their spell, they would have to undergo a reversal of the plot of the early film classic of humans turned into zombies, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
