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The simple answer is "because it would kill his appeal to marginal voters even more effectively than Vance does."
Trump has essentially 100% of the anti-establishment right behind him, but that is only 25-30% of politically engaged Americans, and probably only 20-25% of the Americans who will vote in November. The two main groups he needs to win over are the pro-establishment right (who object to Trump because of his personal obnoxiousness, his anti-Deep State foreign policy, and January 6th, but who will probably hold their noses and vote for him for the tax cuts and judicial nominations) and the "double-haters" who despise both candidates and may be persuadable to vote for the lesser evil.
For the pro-establishment right, "America doesn't have a King" is a foundational belief, and putting an obvious nepo baby on the ticket in what looks like an attempt to secure a dynastic succession would make it a lot harder to hold your nose. (John Quincy Adams and George W Bush had both been through the normal cursus honorum before running for President, which the Trump kids have not. In addition, they both sort-of ran against their fathers' legacies, not as continuations of them). There is also the issue that Jared and Ivanka's foreign business interests make Hunter Biden look like a patriot.
For the double-haters, putting an obvious nepo baby on the ticket makes a lot of the reasons why they hate Trump more salient, which makes Harris look more like the lesser evil.
Before Biden dropped out, I would have said the most likely scenario where he beats Trump is that the Epstein investigations turn up with hard evidence that Trump was banging teenage girls. I hadn't considered the possibility of him being stupid enough to make a family member his running mate.
The thing is he appears to see Vance as a kind of 'son he never had', calling him 'a handsome son of a bitch', saying 'he's got the look', 'beautiful blue eyes' etc. But a true nepo choice would paint Trump as more kingly and unashamed (you say that's a bad thing but I don't think his base would see it as a problem; I suppose the question is, to what extent does he need to enthuse the base and ensure turnout, and to what extent convince undecideds).
Trump's base is the most enthusiastic base in my adult life (Obama's is a distant second, I'm too young to remember Reagan) for a candidate who captured a major-party nomination. He doesn't need to motivate the base. I agree that the 10% most rabidly pro-Trump Americans would be positively excited by a dynastic pick.
FWIW, I think that the MAGA base is sufficiently Trump-pilled that if Trump wins in 2024 and endorses a dynastic successor in 2028, he can deliver the Republican primary with >50% probability. OTOH this would be a good outcome for the Democrats if it happened.
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Could you expand on this?
I assume you mean that W’s “compassionate conservatism” went against Bush Senior’s Reaganite “read my lips” pitch, but on foreign policy I don’t think their platforms differed much; to the extent they did, my read it that it’s because Senior ran during the mop-up operations of the end of the Cold War while W ran in a brave new(ish) unipolar world.
And I know nothing about the Adams family (heh)
On the Addams family, John Sr was a Federalist, and John Q was a Democratic-Republican.
On W, I am being a bit vague, but the points I was thinking about were
"Adams family." "Addams family" is something else.
(I wonder what Pugsley's positions would look like relative to Gomez's.)
I was in the blogosphere back in the Instpundit days, so I understand the full range of meaning that can be squeezed into a "Heh" like @stuckinbathroom's. I forget that the internet is full of whippersnappers nowadays.
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