The last big shake-up involved getting rid of campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, a loose cannon. The new shake-up represents a return to the good old days of Lewandowski, even if he himself isn’t returning to the campaign. As Chuck Todd and Mark Murray of NBC report:
It’s a return to Lewandowski without Lewandowski: As NBC’s Ali Vitali writes, Manafort’s earlier ascension was an effort to professionalize the campaign. “The expectation around Manafort’s installation was for a more traditional campaign in terms of structure, strategy and messaging.” But the Bannon-Conway moves represent a kind of return to Lewandowski—without him back. “Trump’s turn away from Manafort is in part a reversion to how he ran his campaign in the primary with then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. Lewandowski’s mantra was ‘let Trump be Trump’ and Trump wants to get back to that type of campaign culture,” The Washington Post says.
The whole farce shows how ridiculous it ever was to hope—as the RNC and some pundits did—that Trump could mature and pivot to the center. The Lewandowski slogan of “let Trump be Trump” worked because Trump is incapable of being anything other than Trump. Trump is a very fixed character, with little flexibility. Under the stress of a national campaign, his instincts are to double down and become more and more Trump-like. The dream of a pivot to the center deserves what it is getting: an ignominious death.