I will get into more of this later but you are correct.

Yes, Trump has firm ownership of about 40% of the party, the other 60% fears him and so this is why they have bowed down to him. Problem is, the people with the real power in the Republican party want to win elections not lose them. They have evaluated this and Trump does nothing but lose and lose elections for them. He only won against Hillary Clinton, the most hated person by Republican voters, at the peak of her divisive powers. So, yeah, he beat her, which was not a shocker but he has lost and lost elections for Republicans ever since. If they had dumped him right after the attack on the capitol, well, they probably would have had a Red wave during this midterm election. Instead, they backed him and all of his insane candidates, and thought Kari Lake would be the perfect partner for Trump. 

And they lost miserably. 

And you could be correct that Trump will run as an independent. He has threatened the Republicans with this. The only thing I think that would prevent it is the effort it would take to do this. Would it be awesome if Trump did this? Absolutely, it would make it a total lock the Democrat would win. Hell, the Democrats could run anybody if Trump lost the Republican primary and ran as an independent against DeSantis in the general. Republicans would lose between 30-40% of their voters to Trump and the Democrat would have a landslide victory. 

The Republicans are a mess. Greene and Gaetz are now leaders in their party. McCarthy is a weak leader and he can't control the mess the various factions are about to make. The Republicans just lost a whole bunch of elections because voters recognized all they want to do is play politics and what do they do? Immediately announce they are going to start investigating Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, and move toward impeaching Biden. Dumb, and the country is done with this kind of garbage so, only a small percentage of their wacko base wants to see this. I think this is why Joe is so excited, he knows that their stupid meaningless investigations will likely boost him in the polls. Nobody will care except the most extremist right wing loons. 

With the Democrats, the only thing that made my heart sink a bit was a discussion I read of who they believe are their strongest candidates for president. They are coming together now to back Joe, which may be fine as the Republicans have set a course to do damage to themselves, but their second choice was Kamala Harris. Who I thought was a great senator, but she stinks as a campaigner. Plus the Republicans have already done all the work to demonize her. Then they had people like Stacey Abrams, two time loser to Brian Kemp, Elizabeth Warren (seriously the Republicans have already done a number on her), before they got to Gavin Newsome. 

I believe they need to choose a strong candidate that is not already in Washington. Newsome fits that bill but with him you do have to allow the country to get to know him. Plus the idea that he is from California probably counts against him with the conservatives. I like him and I like Josh Shapiro from Pennsylvania but he is newly a governor so, the country does not know him. This could work to his advantage though. 

If you pick people like Harris, Warren, Abrams...well...it is proven that a lot of people you need to vote for them do not like women, do not like progressives, and the three of them have been big targets for the Republicans for some time. I think a DeSantis would beat all three of them and he is a raging asshole who should turn people off but he likely beats any of them easily.