That is worrisome, what you are hearing, and I don’t doubt it as I have been hearing similar here.
I think part of it is a Dem plan to “suck the air out of the room” with various manufactured soap operas about Trump. The Jan6 hearings, FBI raid, DOJ stuff, for sure. They announced long ago they planned to smear Republicans as “The Party of QAnon” in the midterms*. The stolen election staying forefront is partly Trump’s doing. A good candidate could counter that by redirecting away from that endless subject and stating his commitment to ensuring election integrity and making it part of his platform. From what I’m hearing, a number of voters want to hear more about the now and plans for the future rather than rehashing the past. And hey, without election integrity, all is lost anyway.
How to keep Jan6, FBI, DOJ, and all the circuses surrounding them from sucking the air out of the room is beyond me. The Dems keep churning this stuff out, and who knows what else they’ve got up their sleeves? They know they need to fire up their own voters seeing as how Biden and Dem policies have been such huge disappointments and disasters. Of course it also fires up Trump’s base (justfiably) in his defense and in defense of Rule of Law. Those more toward the center are growing ever more weary of the turmoil and divisiveness.
Of course the Dems have been incredibly divisive all along while accusing Trump of being the divisive one. Many who voted for Biden did so because of his promise to be a unifier. They have been bitterly disappointed after his infamous Nuremberg Speech. The Dems apparently feel the need to ratchet it up to make it look like Trump is the reason for all the divisiveness so many are so sick and tired of.
I agree Trump isn’t helping himself by retruthing Q stuff, whether through carelessness or pandering to them. If the MSM keep beating that drum, it could become a real problem. The leftist media have been carrying on about it for some time now.
*See my earlier post on this thread for link:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4093886/posts?page=19#19
BUT, anyone who's been involved in retail politics on the right, either as a volunteer, candidate, GOP committee member, or party delegate will recognize the Q followers, who have always been among us, but with different names.
Back in the day, at least in southern California, the local JBS filled that role. In their case, it wasn't so much that they were wrong on the merits, on the contrary they were mostly right, the CCP was (and is) evil, communism at home is insideous and needed to be fought etc. The problem was, they were impossible to work with; on the one hand many distained the grubby work of knocking on doors, recruiting candidates, making phone calls etc., and worse as time went on, there was a tendency for their more visible members to demand strict, and enthusiastic adherence to their entire program, and the slightest deviation could result in some fairly nasty name calling. Utterly unproductive.
There may well be some Q followers out in the trenches working on the school board campaigns, the city and county council races etc. But they are thin on the ground, and they aren't ranting about Q. FR is different, it's always been the canary in the coal mine, letting you know what you might encounter on those door knocks and phone calls. Ironically, I do hope that our local group of Q people are indeed out on the hustings, doing the hard work of getting good MAGA candidates elected, and squish RINOs 86'd, mainly because while they might have some, ah, idiosyncratic ideas about a variety of things, when it comes down to it, they're supporting right-populist candidates and causes that very much need to win.