Mr. Trump and the Republicans: a game-theoretic approach

That is my latest Bloomberg column on what is going on right now, here is an excerpt:

Right now, another collective-action problem may be damning the Republicans to a worse fate yet. If the Trump candidacy has no chance of winning or holding close, Republican turnout may collapse, thereby endangering party control of many lower political offices.

Republican turnout, and thus electoral success, might be helped if all the Republicans simply pretended that the Trump gaffe hadn’t happened. But politicians often look to their own self-interest. After Trump appears unacceptable enough in the eyes of enough relevant voters, political candidates and other party members will seek to distance themselves from him so they can try to rebuild their reputations once Trump is no longer on the ballot. You might say those individuals are finally doing the right thing, but under another reading a lot of them are acting in their personal self-interest yet again, and again to the detriment of the Republican party (though perhaps not the American citizenry).

In other words, the Republicans have been on the wrong side of game-theory logic twice, first in delaying their opposition and then later in enacting it. Those are hardly examples of getting Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” metaphor to work in their favor.

There is much more at the link.  For related analyses, here are remarks from Sam Wang.  Here are tweets from Megan McArdle.  Here is Paul Gowder, drawing on Timur Kuran.