Concisely put! I appreciate the insight.

As goobster mentioned, the executive branch has consolidated power greatly over the past 20 years (or, more accurately, reclaimed the powers confiscated and then some after Vietnam/Watergate). More importantly, however, representation in the United States heavily favors rural areas and rural areas are largely full of less-educated, poorer, older, whiter voters whose basic mentality is "right track/wrong track" and "wrong track" is anything that doesn't look like 1954.

Political ideology in the United States has become increasingly polarized as the Right has pulled hard into conservative territory, whereby cultural talking points matter far more than economic or geopolitical ones. You have likely heard the term "identity politics" and while the United States is growing increasingly multicultural and cosmopolitan, the rural voter is becoming increasingly old and white.

As a result, the special interests that represent identity have an outsized effect: the NRA, the Christian evangelists, the right-to-lifers, etc. It's telling, for example, that access to abortion is one of the principle battlegrounds of American politics despite the fact that abortions and teenage pregnancy are both less common than they were when Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. Ability to govern matters much less than identity match.

As a consequence, American legislators are terrible at governance but exceptional at sloganeering. This has caused American politics to be largely dysfunctional, with American approval of the House and Senate rarely breaking above 30%. Anyone running for national office, then, can use their job as a target in their ads and blame their job for their ineffectuality. However, they can be held to account in an election year for any votes that do not align with the identity politics of their constituents.

And if you turn on Trump, the whole Trump-o-sphere will turn on you. So if they don't all turn at once, they're dogmeat.

Fundamentally? The Republicans are a rump minority of the United States but the system is imbalanced so they're establishing a dynasty through conservative judges and identity politics.

Works for the Ba'athists.