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They believe there is no one as effective at that, by orders of magnitude, as Trump himself. So once Trump leaves the scene, his base will go back to having formless and directionless anger which will not translate to votes for anyone, or perhaps (in the case of white union workers) can be lured back to the Democrats. Without Trump's base, the old-school Republicans are a distinct minority party and we get one-party rule.
It may be worthwhile to point out that the Republicans were a minority party for the whole postwar period (often about half the size of the Democratic Party) but elected only two term Presidents (depending on how you want to count Nixon) until HW while the Democrats never had a President get reflected anywhere between Truman and Clinton. Republicans were seen as something of the same, stable party for a long time, even by registered Democrats (there's a reason the Republicans got 'evil' out of the 'evil party and stupid party' dichotomy). Plenty of Democrats wanted to vote for Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan over their opponents.
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The better argument, which I've made before at length, is that no other major political figure actually resembles Trump at a detailed level in their politics. Which is remarkable when you consider the degree of his takeover of the GOP and the eight years of dominance he's exercised over party politics. Every single potential heir to MAGA has clear major policy, procedural, and stylistic differences to Trump.
If Biden choked on an almond the Dems would get Kamala, if she laughed until she burst a blood vessel in her brain they would nominate Mayor Pete or Big Gretch or Gavin Newsom, and in that whole process virtually nothing would change policy wise. If Trump simply decided he wanted to golf more and spend time with Barron, policy in the GOP would fundamentally change under his successor.
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I remember establishment Democrats and various "independents" saying the same thing about Ted Cruz and the Tea Party back in 2010/12 and now we have Trump.
As many have pointed out over the last 8 years, Trump is a symptom not the cause, and forgive me if i find your claim that if we ignore the problem it will go away unconvincing.
That doesn't seem to conflict with what he said. The anger from the base has been there in various forms for years. What Trump managed to do was convert that anger into support for him specifically, and for that support to reach a level where Trump can force others to toe the line.
The point isn't that anger will go away, just that it won't converge in a single direction. DeSantis for instance seemed poised to play himself as Trump 2.0, and that didn't work out for him.
DeSantis is in the same boat as Abbott he's got more pull as a governor of an important state than he would as a candidate and has nothing to gain from running as "Trump Lite" while the original is still on the menu.
At 45 years old, DeSantis can afford to wait a few years for Trump to retire.
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