I don’t like that term mainstream conservative. Currently we have a dearth bevy of extremists on one hand and the reasonable people who can hardly be qualified as leftist on the other.
Reasonable people merely look like they’re left and get called communist for supposing we have healthcare and not hurt women.
In short, to call yourself a conservative in this climate is to admit that you’re an extremist too. They are the same people. It’s the same picture.
Yes, that's it. The most confusing thing is it became clear during Trump that there is no reasonable justification anymore to be a "republican."
In the past I sometimes could see the good-faith, but flawed, justification some people had. But now, if you call yourself a republican, you are at least ok with a fascist insurrection, kids in cages, a con man lying to you and you cheering it on with no platform or plan or accountability, with opposition to the core foundations of democracy.
So the rising support for Trump and Republicans after all of that is dumbfounding. In the end, most people seem to have no standards and anything can be normalized. But it's just amazing how quickly society forgets literally World War 2, and somehow we're doing this again.
I think what's happening is that the old political boundaries are being rewritten. The MAGA crowd don't hold all the same views as old school conservatives, and so some of them are now swing voters. But also Trump is pulling some votes from the democrats, most obviously the unions