Republican elites have embraced Trump as their leader.AP Photo/Alex Brandon Erica Frantz, Michigan State University; Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Yale University, and Joseph Wright, Penn State As former President Donald Trump edges closer to clinching the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, our political science research has shown that a second Trump presidency is likely to damage American democracy even more than his first term did. The reason has less to do with Trump and his ambitions than with how power dynamics have shifted within the Republican Party. In our forthcoming book, “The Orig…