"I prefer incompetent evil to competent evil"

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Well, the ur-example of 'incompetent evil' would be the Nazis...

Wouldn’t that be the National Fascist Party?

The Nazis were deeply inept at the most basic aspects of governance in ways that the Fascists, at least early on, were not. Mussolini did not literally make the trains run on time (this is Italy we're talking about), but he was able to rule in a way that didn't require a morally insane plunder economy to sustain itself (although, of course, he chose to go in that direction anyway, a choice that says more about him than his innate tendencies or talents do).

Benito Mussolini experimented with all sorts of economic policies during his rule (partly in response to events and partly because he was delusional) and it sums up to an incoherent mess, but he was ultimately interested in economics and to an extent in materialism - after all he had eagerly followed Vilfredo Pareto's university lectures and had been a socialist, though he came to reject both - in a way Adolf Hitler was not.

I don't think it made much of a difference in the end, but it's telling that Italian fascism was so influenced by futurism (science! technology! speed! glass and steel! shiny new things! more and faster!) while Nazism owes just as much to 19th century Romantic mysticism about a mishmash of everything between a medieval pastoral society and the times when Norse gods roamed the Earth.

Even more telling when one considers how primitive their war machine was, while Nazi one was able to take France near effortlessly.

Hey, hey, the entire Italian war machine was NOT completely incompetent! Yes, Mussolini had to be bailed out by Hitler when he somehow failed to do well in Greece and the Italian military overall was atrociously bad at its goals, but the Regia Marina did a pretty good job! They were probably the best performing Axis navy in WW2!

[Badger]

This is a straw man argument as the correct responses oppose evil. Yes, I am to a degree at least relieved, certainly not happy, that the Trump Administration being unable to effectively plan a picnic led to various conservative legislative matters such as repealing Obamacare going down in flames whereas under a more competent Administration like DeSantis, they might have pulled off that extra one vote.

But again, that's just a silver lining to a very dark evil cloud.

[John Dule]

This is a straw man argument as the correct responses oppose evil. Yes, I am to a degree at least relieved, certainly not happy, that the Trump Administration being unable to effectively plan a picnic led to various conservative legislative matters such as repealing Obamacare going down in flames whereas under a more competent Administration like DeSantis, they might have pulled off that extra one vote.

But again, that's just a silver lining to a very dark evil cloud.

A straw man argument is when you make up a fake quote that nobody actually says.

Again, how can people who closely follow politics even suggest that Trump is worse than McConnell? The latter has been there since 1985 and irreparably destroyed the integrity of the Supreme Court. Trump is a corrupt idiot who fetishizes power. Incompetent evil > competent evil, every time.

I will always take incompetent evil over competent evil.

I retain that incompetent evil is preferable to competent evil, so Trump.

Incompetent evil over competent evil a majority of the time.

Competent evil is worse than incompetent evil 10 out of 10 times.

I'd rather have an incompetent autocrat (Trump) who's more likely to draw greater backlash (even if DeSantis is more deserving of said backlash) and is more importantly term limited than the competent, more politically astute autocrat (DeSantis) who's more capable of doing far greater irreversible  institutional damage than Trump ever could and would be the odds favorite to win re election in 2028.

Even if MTG is as evil as Pinochet, incompetent evil is better than competent evil.

This is not a straw man argument.

[Xing]

The argument is not that incompetent evil is "good." Most of us readily recognize that Trump was a disaster of a president who did possibly irreparable damage to the country. If it were him or a Republican that was demonstrably different from Trump, even if slightly, I would prefer the other Republican. Take DeWine or Kemp. I have enormous disagreements with them, I think DeWine's reputation as a "moderate" is hardly earned, and Kemp's is downright ridiculous, and I would be very strongly opposed to either of them being president. However, there have been some cases where they proved to be marginally better than Trump on topics that really should be considered apolitical (as you mentioned), such as the response to a global pandemic or not being willing to overturn the results of an election. When has DeSantis in any way proved he would be better when it comes to actual job duties? If anything, he's shown that he'll happy politicize almost anything if it'll rile up his supporters.

And the whole point of referring to someone like DeSantis as "competent evil" is that I don't think he'll do the right thing in a time of crisis or represent us well on the global stage. I don't trust him at all not to either exploit a global crisis for political gain, or, similar to what he did during COVID, knowing take a dangerous position to help himself politically. I don't buy that DeSantis would even care about diplomacy unless he found a way to make it benefit himself. I believe that DeSantis would happily lower the standard of living for the average American if it meant appeasing his donors and enriching himself and those within his circle. At least Trump would occasionally stumble upon the right side of an issue (like infrastructure) even if it was for the wrong reason. Politicians like DeSantis will consistently take the side of an issue that will lead us down a worse path.

And I might mention that there still do exist some checks on the president. This is evident, since Trump would've been able to do much, much more damage if not for some within the White House reining him at times. He also wasn't the best at picking out effective lackeys, since his standard was "do they say nice things about me? Okay, good." Trump attempted to get rid of some of these, but could not figure out how to entirely. DeSantis could be much more effective at picking an administration that would never undermine or limit his reach in any way, and could find other ways of doing away with the existing checks on the president. Not to mention, he'd be praised and normalized much more than Trump.

And no, I know far better than to expect people to punish the Republican Party for supporting Trump again. However, if people are going to reward the Republican Party for "moving past" Trump by picking someone who is a Trump acolyte and pretty much indistinguishable from Trump on the issues and very similar to him in manner, the choice is easy for me.