Trump and now the Republican party are driven by being contrarians. When ignorant of any situation just declare the opposite of experts and say you know better.
Yeah they've made it a badge of honor. Being rude (in vulgar fashion) is part of the badge, too, and sometimes seems to be part of what separates Trump Republicans from the old line conservatives. A guy like Wm. F. Buckley Jr. could be quite rude without even raising his voice... and his arguments ran to logic at least occasionally premised in facts that both "sides" of American politics used to acknowledge.
But what's going on now is the extreme edge of an undercurrent of anti-intellectualism back in the 1950s, when it was fashionable to attack the likes of Adlai Stevenson as an "ivory tower academic" and more succinctly as an "egghead". And thanks to Trump seizing on a potential enlargement of the traditional GOP base during a highly populist time in 2016, there's a big component of just "owning the liberals" now, and so the contrarianism isn't really policy based at all, it's just knee-jerk "oh yeah? sez who" and fueled by free floating hyper-partisan rage at so much not-winning.
What those Trump admirers wanted back in 2016, they got: a guy who during his campaign flipped a bird at the establishment. Then his incompetence threw his administration into chaotic struggles with the previous Republican establishment's idea of appropriate policy. Trump's contrarians were never about policy, they were fans of the Tea Party style of The Party of NO.
Meanwhile though it was the old GOP's policies that made it through legislation. That and the ongoing discontent of the "f^ck you!" contingent of the party brought in by Trump could only have been a prelude to what the GOP ended up with, which in 2020 was a national convention that avoided fatal divisions over a policy platform and stuck itself instead with a demo of its conversion to a cult of personality.
And there's the ongoing problem, because not all Republicans are authoritarian followers (which is what the so-called populists actually are who ended up the die-hard fans of Donald Trump). He used those followers while in office to get past some of the milestones along a fascist's path to permanent power: weaken the influence of mainstream media, encourage disregard for facts, focus on him as sole arbiter of the way forward. But those are not the ways of the majority of the potential R-leaning electorate. And that is why he's now dwindling away in Florida, embittered and still fantasizing about the re-election victory that eluded him.
Since Biden's not by nature a flaming liberal partisan, it has become harder for Trump's "authoritarian followers" to find something to latch onto as a followup to the barn-burning days, when the lack of actual policy behind their contrarianism was drowned out by all the bird-throwing. They're out there on social media of their choice, waiting for Trump or some other authoritarian to gather them up again. And of course they are thinking about what happened on January 6th. Trump said he'd be right there with him. And of course he was not. And of course some of them are going to the slam for the violence they committed during the insurrection.
Meanwhile out in Iowa, as prelude to 2024, the GOP offers a parade of lackluster Trump has-beens --guys like Pence and Pompeo-- to the evangelical Republicans. They now wonder if it's time to move on, having had to confront what they stooped to in support of a man who was all along the antithesis of their own supposed moral compass. Some of them are still fans, not so much of Trump, rather of his court appointments or tax cuts, and they do think it's time to move on. But what they see are some of Trump's most abject lackeys.
The lack of concerted enthusiasm is palpable, even given that the 2024 nomination itself is far into the future. The opportunity there for a fresh figure to step in is palpable. The question is whether the GOP will advance its exploration of authoritarianism as a way to retain power in the face of a shrinking if very vocal electorate. So far the plethora of vote-suppressive state legislation since 2020 suggests that's likely. After all, the head of the RNC said for the record during winter session after Trump's defeat, "We're not having an election like that again." Doubled down contrarianism.