That's why I excluded Trump from the mix. He's obviously an outlier in this regard. The rest of them broadened their messages, or at a minimum communicated more inclusively than in the primaries. The Republicans have shot themselves in the foot by actually shrinking their party in recent years, which means they have effectively ceded a large swath of independents to the Dems. Issues like Abortion and a few others won't work in the Republicans favor next year imo.
I don't think he's an outlier so much as being representative of where the GOP is now and where it's been moving the last 10-15 years. We don't have any other national examples in the last 10 years to support the view that without Trump, a GOP candidate will suddenly moderate.
Independents aren't a consistent block either. They might average out to be "moderate" but in reality, they come from multiple vastly diverse camps from progressives who don't like corporate Dems to lite Libertarians that care only about personal economics, to people that care about social issues first to economic issues first. Because of SCOTUS, no independent that cares about abortion will suddenly switch from Biden to a "moderate rhetoric" GOP candidate. Independents that care mostly about the economy aren't going to base their decision at all on what a candidate says in general election campaigning. For them, it will mostly be a referendum on Biden and if they think Biden's policies will work for the economy or simply their personal bank account.
The only recipe for a GOP win in 2024 is doing what they did in 2016 and almost did in 2020 which is 1) maximizing turnout for their base 2) limiting Dem turnout through voter suppression 3) trying to demoralize progressives and get them to stay home.
I don't see any viable plan for GOP this year that suddenly includes a more moderate GOP candidate that attracts a wide swath of independents that went from Biden in 2020. In the future, sure, maybe a Jeryd Mencken type that doesn't have such divisive rhetoric as Trump or DeSantis and is way smoother with dog whistles could do that but that's not the reality for this year IMO.