This is how Republicans need to clean house to easily win in 2024:
Trump will need to bow down and endorse DeSantis, who will elect Musk as his VP.
There are all sorts of alternative universes that can play out, but I believe mine is the single one that makes enough of the coalition happy to garner all the votes. Trump would "play behind the scenes" and enough of his die-hard followers will bend the knee to their next leader. The reason why it's a necessity for Trump to bow down is because that will attract enough establishment type voters (both liberal and conservative) to go Red because they're unhappy with the economy, and most of them just want right wing politics that's calm.
DeSantis already has a big bump from midterms, so he can ride that into the election. Democrats can only now claim "but orange man used to be bad?" with a faint whimper.
Musk is simply the libertarian vote to prevent any spoiler 3rd party candidates [is that the word?].
All that being said, keep in mind I am not coming at this from any bias, I think everyone is garbage and I'm on team "eating popcorn while watching the world burn, on Hulu." We also live in Illinois (for the most part), so our votes don't mean Jack [thinking about Biden whispering "listen here...Jack" into my ear as he grabs my shoulders].
Let's do some rapid fire Q/As: What will certain Trumper's think? Will they be mad? Who cares, they probably will vote DeSantis anyway. What about Abortion? Conservatives should probably tone that rhetoric down since they "won." Will enough people switch teams? You can never grab all the voters, especially these days. I believe there are more libertarians emerging in the younger generation and those are the votes Republicans need to garner. When does all this need to happen? Asap, now, right this second. Can Republicans win any other way? Probably, but this is the hands down the easiest path to victory. What are the chances of it unfolding exactly like you say? This is a "stars aligning" sort of scenario, and I have no faith that anything like what I described could happen. Trump will probably get bitter if he's forced out and refuse to endorse anyone. If Repubs have their hands on whatever puppet masters they're grasping at, this is the future they should try to carve. But since none of us are conspiracy theorists... *nervously looking around trying to spot lizard people*...we can safely assume that that indeed some dumb curve ball is going to fly our way and mix things up as per usual.
PS: there's no way you can debate me on this. You have to at least give me some credit that this is a spot on take. Put politics aside and let me be right for once in the last half decade...at least tell me you're devil's advocating me after a brief praise.