I keep coming back to "all this for literally Donald Trump," but it fits. There's not some more competent aspiring autocrat who'd somehow "earn" or "win" this. This is how it has always gone: feckless/evil elites attaching themselves to the sociopath they believe will get them where they want to go.
I believe that most of them truly believe that they are not doing it for Trump, and that he will die before the intraparty reckoning that has been looming since 2016 comes to a head. They keep losing those rolls of the dice, but are too committed to the plan to hold up or back out now.
