Kind of surprised you waded back into this here after such a long silence, Pat. Again, I will make an effort here to have an exchange with you on this stuff because I am genuinely interested in how you come to the conclusions you do. 

So they go after and arrest Trump on a politically based charge(it obviously is).

What I am guessing you are talking about here are the rumors that Trump will be indicted in New York for his hush money payment to Stormy Daniels...because this is what Trump announced he believes he will be arrested for on Tuesday. First, Trump is hyping his own arrest, this so far does not appear to be going to happen, Trump just wants to activate his most violent followers because he feels the walls are closing in on him. I think the thing you need to always keep in mind about Donald is everything he does is designed to create chaos and destruction. So, this is, again, primarily why he is promoting the idea he will be arrested. He wants chaos to breakout, he wants that for both distraction and threat to any and all that try to hold him accountable for his actions. In reality, we don't know that Trump will be arrested, but we do know because he is a former president he will be treated in a much different way than anybody else would. So, if people are hoping to see him in jail, I would not hold my breath on that. 

He is convicted and can't run and De-Santis takes his place. 

So, this would be the hope of a certain faction of the Republican party. Yes, they do not want him to run. He is a danger to the party, has no loyalty to it, and he is a pure authoritarian bully to them. He is mostly a threat to them. For Democrats, he is basically wonderful. They won't outright say it, but they want to run against him. Democrats poll better against him than any other Republican. Depending on how much damage Trump inflicts on DeSantis I'm not certain any longer how strong an opponent Ron will be. At first, I thought nearly a sure thing DeSantis is our next president. However, Trump has gone at him viciously and knocked his numbers way down. Things are slipping toward Ron won't be able to beat Don...and if Ron gets a whiff he can't beat Trump, he will look for an exit strategy to minimize the damage to his future potential to run and attempt to realign himself as Donny's mini me. Ron is, in the end, as gutless as other Republicans to challenge Trump. DeSantis was the hope of Republicans to defeat Trump but it has turned out Ron does not have the vicious charisma that Trump has and so unless he suddenly decides he will risk the fight which could permanently damage him, he likely backs away.

Take the politics out of this and think of this purely as a strategy.

Well, Trump himself does not have a strategy, it is just vicious brute force and intimidation of his opponents. The great thing right now is his opponent since leaving office is the Republican party. He is not the normal opponent in that he does not care if he destroys the party completely. He is only for himself, period, end of story. So, he will not hesitate to nuke the Republican party. He constantly reminds them of that to bend them to his will. His people will threaten to kill his opponents and their families. Many Republicans have left and or are leaving the party because they do not want the death threats against their families. There seems little to no backbone to stand up to him in the party. They were for a short time when they thought DeSantis could save them, but as he is showing he likely does not have this in him and Trump has been just giving him a brutal beat down. I thought DeSantis would put up more of a fight but he looks like he is cowering more than I thought he would. Some of the things Rupert Murdoch has said indicate to me that DeSantis let him know he fears what Trump may do to him if he tries to stand up to him. Trump is all for people killing his opponents and would not take issue with that if it happened. He would claim no responsibility, of course, but he is trying to work the nuts that support him into a froth so they will kill for him. 

This is one of my huge questions and where when a guy like Ross says he does not see the heavy authoritarian bent of guys like Trump or DeSantis, or a massive chunk of the Republican party...I and others will question, where you are looking if you don't see it. We've never had an internal threat to the country at this level before. When a former president is actively working to undermine our democracy. I mean, that's the platform. 

My current view
Trump would win the nomination but would struggle in the  General Election.

I think that is true. Trump has a huge problem, which is to get elected president you have to win more than just your base. He needs to win independents and to win big, he needs to draw in some Democrats as well. That's how it works. He has more and more only attempted to appeal to the base and then took it further to just appealing to the worst elements in his base. In doing so, he has alienated pretty much everybody to the left of Attila the Hun. Meaning everybody except for the total kooks in the Republican party. I think he understand this and I think he also knows that once that strategy is put into place...there is no going back. Which is why yesterday, he attempted to activate his army of death and destruction. 

We crossed a line with what happened on January 6th and really, for those with Trump that wanted that line crossed, there is no going back. You can't say "Oops, just kidding!" because in doing that, you lost too many supporters for good. So, as your following shrinks, only violence is the way forward. Trump is willing to play this until the end, his or ours. It's a bad place to be. 

I think the faction of Republicans that want to be free of Trump's threat, that still believe in our country and want a democracy, have placed their hopes on DeSantis. Essentially with the idea that Ron will pretend to be Trump but once he gets power, he would then betray the MAGA crowd. 

I don't know if he will do that. The difference between DeSantis and Trump is that DeSantis is smarter than Trump. However, he seems to be as horribly authoritarian as Trump and may wield his powers in an even worse way than Trump. Trump is purely a blunt force object. He only knows how to be a hammer. Beyond that, he is a total moron. DeSantis, I think, could be even more dangerous because he knows how to be more than just a hammer.