Nah, this used to be the case, but now enough of them have drank the koolade, they actually believe the nonsense far beyond what serves the grift. You can see it in the way their policies of the past 20 years keep fucking up the broader economy in ways which don’t really help anyone. You can see it in how the GOP has basically given itself over to Christian Nationalism, which is an ideological minefield, and frequently at odds with the will of the oligarchy.

Part of why this is so scary is because a standard con artist is still a rational actor. They might rationally fuck you over, but at the end of the day they will operate within a fairly predictable set of boundaries. Political and religious zealots famously don’t have those guardrails. And now what we have is the worst possible scenario - Christian nationalists who will subvert democracy for sky daddy, and Trumpists who will subvert democracy over their orange daddy aggrievememt complex.