I mean, it’s true in regards to the Republicans, all their ideas of “strong men” actually exemplify deeply insecure and weak mean.
However, I think these remarks attributed to Karl Rove speak to why they’re effective, politically, despite that:
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore.” He continued “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
I mean, to be fair, that’s pretty spot-on for how the entire Republican apparatus has operated for the better party of 30 years or more. That’s when they really threw out the book on the hand-shake norms that were “expected” in governance. People act like Trump refusing to concede was something shocking, but rather to me, it seems like the end of a long-worn path that was always going to lead to the outcome of a Republican refusing to accept an election loss. Even without Trump, they’ve been growing into a regressive regime seeking religious Monarchy for quite a long time now. It’s been an incredibly effective play and shows that while they are weak, they understand the execution of power within the system as it exists. Without the system as it exists, they flail, but they’re not really concerned with the future because they’re weak and can’t conceive that far ahead. In the meantime they’re willing and effective actors for destroying the system on which they rely so deeply.