Eh, I wouldn’t put it past them to run someone and keep handlers on them at all times to win the primary, and then let them loose on their own during the general election, if such a thing were feasible. The one thing I have confidence in the GOP to do, besides line their pockets, is any dirty trick they think they can get away with, no matter how crazy a scheme is involved, if it’ll let them get ahead and cement their own power. Besides, there was a point where those centrists certainly did play better with the general population than anyone even accused of being a socialist not all that long ago, and I don’t think the GOP of the time had much in the way of moral scruples back then, either.
That’s theoretically possible, but there’s a limit to how well people can repeatedly lie about their core beliefs. Also it’s not as if progressives aren’t watching out for stuff like that; most potential ppants will have some kind of history that can be inspected to ascertain their intentions, and large-scale conspiracies have a tendency to leak. It’s not impossible (see: Fetterman), but the noteworthiness of Fetterman should tell you how hard it is to pull this kind of thing off, and even Fetterman had people warning about him during his campaign, not to mention Fetterman had a stroke. So basically the GOP doesn’t do this sort of thing more/at all because it’s really hard to pull off and would have diminishing returns as people wisen up (again the progressive attitude post-Fetterman is informative). They probably have better (meaning worse) things to be doing.
Eh, I wouldn’t put it past them to run someone and keep handlers on them at all times to win the primary, and then let them loose on their own during the general election, if such a thing were feasible. The one thing I have confidence in the GOP to do, besides line their pockets, is any dirty trick they think they can get away with, no matter how crazy a scheme is involved, if it’ll let them get ahead and cement their own power. Besides, there was a point where those centrists certainly did play better with the general population than anyone even accused of being a socialist not all that long ago, and I don’t think the GOP of the time had much in the way of moral scruples back then, either.
That’s theoretically possible, but there’s a limit to how well people can repeatedly lie about their core beliefs. Also it’s not as if progressives aren’t watching out for stuff like that; most potential ppants will have some kind of history that can be inspected to ascertain their intentions, and large-scale conspiracies have a tendency to leak. It’s not impossible (see: Fetterman), but the noteworthiness of Fetterman should tell you how hard it is to pull this kind of thing off, and even Fetterman had people warning about him during his campaign, not to mention Fetterman had a stroke. So basically the GOP doesn’t do this sort of thing more/at all because it’s really hard to pull off and would have diminishing returns as people wisen up (again the progressive attitude post-Fetterman is informative). They probably have better (meaning worse) things to be doing.