NeverTrump Makes a Left Turn

By

National Review in February 2016 published “Against Trump,” a special issue that made a reasoned case for why conservatives should oppose Donald Trump’s nomination as the Republican candidate for president. Nearly two-dozen conservative writers and influencers weighed in; most of them cogently—and correctly—explained that Trump was not a “true conservative.” He had supported progressive causes in the past (including abortion and single-payer health care), and did not possess the intellectual mooring that conservatives value. Some writers faulted Trump for his boorish, impulsive temperament and populist rhetoric.

It was a measured assessment by fair-minded people, some of whom—such as Cal Thomas and Thomas Sowell—have helped attract millions of devotees to the conservative movement. Young, energetic newcomers, including Ben Domenech and Katie Pavlich were also featured. Some highlights:

Ben Domenech (editor, The Federalist): “Conservatives should reject Trump’s hollow, Euro-style identity politics. But conservatives have far more to learn from his campaign than many might like to admit. The Trump voter is moderate, disaffected, with patriotic instincts. He feels disconnected from the GOP and other broken public institutions, left behind by a national political elite that no longer believes he matters.”

Mark Helprin (novelist): “He doesn’t know the Constitution, history, law, political philosophy, nuclear strategy, diplomacy, defense, economics beyond real estate, or even, despite his low-level-mafioso comportment, how ordinary people live.”

Katie Pavlich (editor, Townhall): “Trump’s liberal positions aren’t in the distant past—he has openly promoted them on the campaign trail. Conservatives have a serious decision to make. Do we truly believe in our long-held principles and insist that politicians have records demonstrating fealty to them?”

Of course, Trump went on to win both the nomination and the election. Several of the writers, grown-ups who love their country more than they love proving they were right, managed to move on in life, staying true to their conservative principles while praising and criticizing the president as the occasion warranted.

But a handful of other alleged conservatives, who joined forces before the general election to form the “NeverTrump” movement, saw an opportunity. Rather than keeping a much-needed policy check on an unpredictable president and gobsmacked Congress, they positioned themselves as “conservative” Trump foes, and, in the process, boosted their number of followers on social media and number of appearances on cable news shows.

People such as Bill Kristol, Jennifer Rubin, and Bret Stephens have carved out a niche for themselves as the go-to source for reporters to get blistering commentary about Trump, or his administration, or his family, or his congressional allies, or his voters. Kristol’s number of Twitter followers has nearly tripled, as he churns out hourly rants that veer from impeachment pleas to far-fetched conspiracy theories on Russia, Mike Pence, and Trump’s inner circle. They promote the darkest narrative, not just of Trumpism, but of Republicans in general, mimicking the same, weary warnings Democrats have shrieked for decades—that Republicans are racist, sexist, homophobic, and plain stupid. These self-proclaimed guardians of America’s modern conservative legacy have ceased talking about anything of substance. They are as reactionary and emotive as high school sophomores.

It is all Trump, all the time. In the process, they have abandoned both their party and their principles.

This past week proves how unhinged, dishonest, and untethered to conservatism some NeverTrumpers have become. Not only are they backing away from a fundamental conservative belief—the constitutionally-protected right to bear arms (Stephens last month wrote a column supporting the repeal of the Second Amendment)—they rooted for, then celebrated, Ralph Northam’s gubernatorial win in Virginia.

Let’s start with the Democrats’ big win on Tuesday. On Election Day morning, Evan McMullin, Kristol’s handpicked puppet to challenge Trump as an independent last year, tweeted this:

(Side note: On what planet does this dullard have 400k “conservative” Twitter followers? Does he know he’s being used? That these people aren’t who they say they are?)

Kristol followed-up with a non-endorsement endorsement of Northam as well:

Kristol’s wife, Susan, donated to Northam’s campaign, and made no secret about her support for a candidate who wants to protect Obamacare, allow abortion-on-demand, and repeal concealed carry:

Jennifer Rubin, who has the gall to call herself a “conservative blogger,” and the Washington Post has the gall to present her as such, spent the past few weeks mocking prayer, demonizing the NRA, defending the estate tax, and smearing Ed Gillespie. In her post-election piece, Rubin wrote (I literally cannot stop laughing as I read it):

The mood of the country a year after Trump’s victory may not be as anti-government as some thought. Instead of unrelenting hostility toward government, verging on nihilism, we see voters going for pro-government candidates, even ones seeking to expand health care. You never know what you stand to lose until you look into the abyss and see the loss of a politically sane and functional government.

Do it with me: LOL

She wasn’t the only one dancing in the NeverTrump end zone. Kristol, Stephens, Rick Wilson, and other devoted NeverTrumpers posted and retweeted the election news in an “I-told-you-so” way that had nothing to do with conservatism and everything to do with political revenge. Fox News’s Brit Hume took notice of the celebration, and tweeted, “this is what the never-Trump movement is becoming—a cheering section against Republicans.” Stephens stepped up to defend his NeverTrump compatriots in what could be the most dishonest tweet of the day:

(Keep in mind, Stephens not only wants the Second Amendment repealed, he became a recent climate-change convert after years of calling it a sham.)

Hume fired back:

The fray was not unnoticed. Erick Erickson, a contributor to NR’s “Against Trump” issue, summed it all up: “I’ve wanted to say NeverTrump died with the election, but there really are Republicans now who’d cheer on the devil if Trump said he believed in God.”

Indeed.

So, where do these NeverTrumpers go from here? There seems to be a gradual split in the ranks and a recognition that the most fervent among them have lost their senses. There is also no compelling strategy to “take back” the GOP with any policy platform or candidate development effort. (The best they could do is come up with a letter to support Robert Mueller. Not exactly a winning message for 2018.)

Kristol is rooting for the implosion of the GOP because that’s what he predicted would happen if Trump was elected. With a history of poor political prognostication, Kristol is hell-bent on making sure the Republican Party pays the price for nominating and electing Trump, even if it means the other side, with its destructive agenda of progressive policies, wins. Kristol, Rubin, Stephens, are now de facto, if not actual, liberals. We should stop allowing them to get away with calling themselves anything but that; the media will rub them in our faces until we do.

 Soon, however, the Virginia election will be a memory, these NeverTrumpers’ social-media fist-bumping will end, and they will still be left with a president they detest, an electorate they ridicule, and lost integrity they won’t be able to recover.

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134 responses to “NeverTrump Makes a Left Turn”

  1. He lives rent free in their heads. How dare he get elected without their permission? The only person the NeverTrumper destroys, is himself.

  2. They’re just exposing themselves for what they’ve always been: progressives.

    • They are all ego, all the time. For Never Trumpers nothing is more important than the “Great Me..” Trump does not have near the ego of any of them.

      • This is the nonsense that cause some to refer to Trump’s most die-hard supporters cultists. I know what real Communists are and have done in this world. You need to learn.

      • How about fellow travelers? Let’s not be all that particular. Scratch a socialist and you find a Marxist or Communist. Scratch a Democrat and find a socialist.
        Scratch a Never Trumper and find a globalist. Which is a Socialist-Capitalist. I.E. State run Industry. Or Fascist. The flip side of the socialist coin.

      • Sounds like you need to quit reading bumper stickers and try to understand a little more. How is free trade “state-run” in any sense of the imagination?

    • Said what I was going to say. They haven’t changed, just revealed their true colors.

  5. Julie recognized the extreme lengths to which these Never Trumpers have prostrated themselves. They are now kissing the feet of the prince of darkness trying to sell their souls for a magic bullet that will take out the duly-elected POTUS. They should be banned from participating in all future GOP events.

    • Sorry about the IQ/Nobel Prize thing. South Indians and Eastasians are ahead of you, too. So you got the shit end of the genetic stick. Not the end of the world. Happy Wal-Mart greetery!! BYE!!

      • Meh ….. spelling competition ?

        There are smart folks in every demographic. I’m referring to the average IQ numbers. Whites…then East Asians….then Ashkenazi Jews. I am not either an East Asian nor an Ashkenazi btw.

      • The Ashkenazim are atop the list, by almost all measures, save that of walking down the street in Cambridge, MA, as I have… you could be in Seoul or Beijing. Can’t say for sure, but my guess is about 80% MIT students or young STEM grads working for the biotech companies. The Dravidian Indians are the new kids on the IQ block, so to speak, but IMO this is a matter of underexposure.

      • Dravidians ?….Not according to data. And Harvard is not a measure of anything but admissions agenda.

      • My understanding is that East Asian is a separate category from Caucasian which includes Indians, Kasnmiris. Malay would be included in the East Asian.

      • Wrong all the way through. Indians are south Asians.

        Malayalees are not “Malays”; they are Indians from the state of Kerala

      • I know the designation South Asian. It has nothing to do with genes. Indians are Caucasians in the broadest sense……Aryan /Vedic invasions-migrations and all that.
        I thought you meant Malaysians not Tamil Malaysians. Non Tamil Malaysians are a mix of Caucasians and East Asians.

      • Wha?

        I was not talking about either Tamil Malaysians or Malaysians of any sort. Malayalees are Malayalam-speakers from Kerala. Tamil Nadu is a separate state. I don’t know where or how you dragged in the other stuff from, and will do you the favor of not commenting on it.

      • You were unclear. Suffice it to say the Dravidians are not East Asians and are not included in their IQ demographic studies.

        Your thinking is muddled. I’ve noticed this with many atheists. And I myself am not even religious ….. more agnostic. But that gives me the advantage to view the religious mind with a certain detachment. And trust me atheism is a religion. It’s adherents display all the characteristics of religious zealotry.

      • You didn’t know the difference between Malayalees and Malaysians, nor do you know “its” from “it’s”. But, yeah, MY thinking is muddled.

        And yes, all atheists and indeed all religious skeptics “display all the characteristics of religious zealotry.” That’s a good one… those horrible atheists in Denmark and Finland, um, SAVED JEWS during the Shoah, while much of religious Europe couldn’t kill them rapidly enough. Any more brilliant pronunciamentos for the board today? “All people who are 6’4″ like chunky peanut butter,” perhaps? “All people from Ann Arbor hate old Fleetwood Mac albums,” mebbe? This is great stuff.

      • Yeah I already said I mistook Malayalees for Malaysians.

        You expose yet another difference …… folks like me are honest compared to Zealots like you. You known by your words and actions.

      • Actually, you were notably dishonest; you presumed to prattle on knowledgeably about something about which you were utterly ignorant. Zealotry and honesty are unrelated, and the evidence on which you call me a “zealot” (capital Z, yet, presumably for emphasis, and I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt there) is non existent. Everyone who has opinions is emphatically not a zealot, otherwise the term would apply to all humanity and be meanaingless.

      • I know about the studies relating demographics to IQ. Your “benefits” are irrelevant …… and even Irrelevant.

        You asked a question about demographics and then went on to include a microcosm sample which is more related to political agenda and admissions quotas then to scientific sampling. Which is irrelevant . You seam to have a predilection for such, making your own loci among the average of the studies I referenced.

        That along with the usual arrogance and ZEALOTRY which comes with highly charged religious Atheists.

      • Oh, so intelligence is irrelevant, and IQ scores do not correlate with future success. Also, the moon is made of Vegemite, and deer are fish.

        As for this “admissions quotas” stuff you raise, apparently you come from some alternate universe in which Jews, Eastasians and Indians are actively sought out by college admissions officers. Do you have children, much less children of college age?

        And, yes “zealotry” does indeed mean “having opinions,” just the same way “tall” means “being between 4’3″ and 5’5.” As for being “highly charged”, yes, I have synapses. So do you and so does the rest of humanity. As such, in your view, everyone is a zealous pantheistic high-IQ dumb Malaysian who gets a free ride at MIT due to anti-black admissions officers.

      • You’re dissembling and rambling now. Never a good sign. Recommendation is a cup of some kind of Tea….and a lie down.

      • No, I’m holding your ideas, such as they are, up to the cold, hard light of ridicule. If all of it sailed far over your head, I am not in the least surprised.

        But I already took your recommendation as to tea, though the lower-case version… specifically Snapple iced, raspberry. Just one of my many, um, zealotries.

      • This is largely the result not of intellectual superiority or inferiority, but rather the depth to which many of schools have sunk, and the hunger of those immigrants who came here for the American Dream. Gifted and ambitious Americans still exist in great numbers however; the state of our education and the hunger and ambition to pursue a better life is no longer as deeply embedded in the wealthy nation of the United States. Our poor live better than anywhere else in the world and this has tamped down the aspirations of many and you can trace this demise to be a direct result of the rise of the welfare state.

      • “…you can trace this demise to be a direct result of the rise of the welfare state.”

        Well, hey, that, erm, construction proves your own point. Bien fait!!

      • A detail that is hardly indicative of what you think it means, chump.

      • Are you having an identity crisis or just an emotional moment of serious self doubt?

      • So, perhaps Eric Hoffer had you in mind when he wrote, “Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.”

    • I appreciate your mental illness and pathological need to help the left by being an anti-semite, but as far as I know, none of them are Israeli citizens. None of them have lived in Israel for over a year and applied for Israeli citizenship. You’re entitled to your opinion but not to lie. Get psychiatric care

  8. Could it be that these people are only conservative in name only? Several of them are Jews and are much closer to progressivism than they’d ever admit publically. What they don’t understand is that voters not only don’t pay attention to them, most have never heard of them.

    • “… voters not only don’t pay attention to them, most have never heard of them…”
      LOVE IT! This is such a great point, and it saddens me to think that some elitists may NOT care if anyone listens to them…or has heard of them… or understands them…Solipsistic elitists?

    • What does religion have to do with this? There are plenty of Jewish neoconservatives and Jews who follow other conservative ideologies or have other opinions on Trump, or who support Trump when he does something conservative and oppose him when he does other things.

  9. Kristol is a neo-con elitist, McMullin is a CIA Deep State flunky, and Stephens at the NYT so he can’t be conservative. That these Swamp Creatures hate Trump is not a surprise to anyone.

    • Stephens at the NYT so he can’t be conservative. Shepherd Smith is at Fox News, and same people call him a Liberal now.

      • Difference is, Smith can be a liberal at Fox, because Fox actually does hire liberals. Ask Juan Williams, Bob Beckel, etc if Fox hires liberals.

        However, Stephens can’t be a conservative at the NYT, because the NYT doesn’t hire conservatives, not one.

  10. Wow, Ms Kelly. What a concise, eloquent summation of the Never-Tumpers’ attitude. Loved it..

    • Hopefully Ms. Kelly will be replacing somebody of these NeverDopers as a major conservative voice.

  11. Bill Kristol was a Henry “Scoop” Jackson supporter – a liberal Democrat hawk. Probably America’s greatest pubic intellectual, David Horowitz, also a Jew, has described Kristol as a “renegade Jew”. Kristol grew up as a Trotskyite. Kristol has just gone home to where he belongs – the Red Army.

    • Ever see Kristol and Bob Woodward in the same room together?

      • His father was a Trotskyite, until he had a Pauline conversion on thr road to Damascus.

      • Kristol was a teenager, when his father broke from the Left. And the family certainly didn’t live like proletarians. Bill Kristol went to an elite prep school in NYC.

      • Nothing is more common than effete, Leftist “intellectuals”. I actually have a high regard for his late father, Irving, whom I knew. “Two Cheers for Capitalism” is incisive. But Bill is just a traitor. I now think Bill is a lot of the reason his Vice President, Dan Quayle, had such a bad reputation in many quarters.

  12. They can repeal the 14th, 17th, 20th, and even the 13th and 23rd amendments. The government CANNOT repeal the 2nd amendment or any other of the 1-10 “Bill of Rights” amendments. The Country’s founders determined that 1-10 were “God given” rights of the citizenry; rights that the citizens had and and some that the citizens “allowed” the government to use.

  14. Spot on! Kristol and his ilk can go pound sand and go take a long walk off of a short pier. And please take Mr. Potato Head (Karl Rove) with you!

  16. It’s good that they were exposed for the frauds they were: people who found they could make a living proposing the GOP be Democrat-lite. Full blown Trump Derangement Syndrome is a sad thing to witness. The loss of NR from serious magazine to circle jerk of lunacy has been particularly disappointing.

  17. Mystified by the N-T Republicans. It is funny, in a pathetically sad way, that one of the things I love about conservatives is their free thought, always weakens us politically. People on the left, as if sharing a single hive mind, always fall in line and never trashe their own. Therein lies a lot of their power.

  18. Follow the money to understand the never-Trumpers in the media.
    Trump’s Republican party threatens the big corporations and big-wig donors.
    Most journalists don’t live in the real world. However, they do live in places with very high expenses, so who can blame them for taking a job that pays better?

    • “Trump’s Republican party threatens the big corporations and big-wig donors.”

      I quibble only with the notion that Trump threatens big business. He wishes not to threaten them but enable them to be successful while attempting to level the playing field for the real drivers of new industries the small businesses and entrepreneurs.

      • I agree with you. He doesn’t directly threaten them, but his immigration policies are causing wages to rise, and they don’t like to see that happen.

  19. Kristol, Rubin Stephans…hmmm. I wonder what they have in common?

  20. Agreed! Kristol ceased being a Conservative a while back and he has now become a Democrat! He might as well register as one too! I will always refer to him as such from here on out! One thing is for sure though, he and his opinions do not deserve 5 minutes of discussion time. He may as well be kneeling on the football field while the National Anthem is being played or the Pledge of Allegiance is being recited, that’s how radical he has become.

    • A case can be made that Kristol was never a conservative. Wanting to see other people’s children and grandchildren killed in meaningless wars is hardly a conservative value.

      • Do you want me to list neoconservatives who have fought in the military or we’ll have children and grandchildren in the US Military? Would sexual West matter to you? Or being useful idiot for the left, would you simply seek another line to help left?

  21. Kristol always was and always will be an elitist snob who thinks he is smarter than everyone else. He is that republican who would clutch his pearls when Reagan called the Soviet Union the evil empire. He is everything that the republican party should walk away from and never ever look back. I became a republican because I was fairly certain that Reagan was the new republican party, the one that Trump has rediscovered, the one that cares about the country and her people more than ideology.

  22. Kristol and the rest of that ilk still don’t have any understanding whatsoever of why Donald Trump is President; they can’t grasp that in large part they are responsible for his Presidency. They can not grasp what We, The Great Unwashed out here in the hinterland mean when we say “establishment Republicans.” If you come right down to it, they don’t have any real understanding of what a True Conservative is, and further [to quote Rush], Conservatism is not on the ballot this year [2016]. “The Establishment” is what was on the ballot, and We, The Deplorables understood that Conservatism didn’t stand a chance until the Establishment was banished.

    Drain the Swamp.

    To put Kristol in perspective, he has never really ever been a Conservative. He’s a Neo-Con.

    • Exactly right. Neo-con became such an abused term that it stopped meaning anything after a while. Literally anyone who was a hawk or interventionist was a neo-con after a while. But that isn’t true. A neo-con, or neo-conservative, is someone who is a NEW conservative. As in, not really a conservative. They were liberals, who in the 1970s opposed the left wing direction of the Democratic Party when they became isolationists after the Vietnam War. They supported Reagan on his anti-communism in the 1980s and eventually became Republicans. But they were always liberals. The hilarious thing now is that they can’t see what’s coming in the Democratic Party, because they have been away for so long. What will they do when Bernie Sanders takes over the Democratic Party which is almost sure to happen in 2020. Is Democratic-Socialism now parcel to their “principles?” What does Kristol think his newfound twitter “followers” will do when he attacks Sanders? When these neo-cons come crawling back, which they will, what do they expect to find awaiting them?

      • I always appreciate when people bring light to terms that have become meaningless because of misuse and ignorance and you have done a very good job here. I disagree that in essence stating many neo-cons of yore remain liberal as I have seen many who I believe are by and large conservatives be it in social and or economic issues. At the least, they have been hospitable to those who hold those tenets. At the same time, not all Never Trumpers are neo-cons. I am socially and economically unabashedly conservative but definitely never Trump. While he has been better than I feared I have been against him from the jump because of his continual dishonesty and poor character. To me, policies are of course very important but character is even more important.

  23. Well put Julie. They really are dirtbags, particularly the vile and loathsome kristol,rubin and flake. Stephens is just an opportunistic hack slimeball.

  24. The “never Trump-ers” were “NEVER Americans” first………….

      • The glaring facts are that “never Trump-ers” are NOT for America. They are for ‘themselves’. “Never Trump-ers” were “never Americans” first and they AREN’T Americans in their hearts, minds and souls NOW. Whatever else they are aside from that doesn’t enter the equation…… I am speaking from the standpoint as an ‘American FIRST’. If they aren’t for America FIRST they aren’t Americans in their hearts. It’s so simple that even weak minded people can see it’s so. Provided they aren’t “never Trump-ers” themselves……..

      • And so far as president Trump is far more support of Israel than Hillary Clinton, your argument is laughable e invalid. Attempt to rational thought

  27. The AmericanInterest, National Review, Cal Thomas, Thomas Sewell are all “clean hands conservatives”. As such they have accomplished exactly 0 as far as helping to solve America’s problems. While the man they think they are superior to (and manifestly are not) has accomplished so much in such a short time, in getting America back to health. As a marine captain told me once, “shit in one hand, and talk in the other, and see which one fills up first”.

  28. There is no difference between the NeverTrumperTantrumists and Hillary supporters. They are Big Government leftist moonbats who scream helplessly at the sky.

  29. Perfectly stated Julie. I have to say though, I am quite enjoying their distress.

  30. The idea that neocons like the Kristols and Rubin were ever conservatives is laughable. Neocons are liberal globalists that became upset with the Democrats because they weren’t pro-Israel enough. They side with the Dems 80% of the time. Like Joe Scarborough, Bret Stephens will dance for whomever pays him well.

    • The new conservative movement started in the 1960s, when the Democrats were more pro-israel than Republicans. The brake had nothing to do with Israel or Jews, and most neoconservatives are and were catholic. I’m sorry you don’t know anything about the history of the movement or what it actually stands for.

  31. They hold the failure of Gillespie’s faux Conservative campaign to excite Virginia’s Trump supporting base as a sign that MAGA is a dead issue. The same is true of Alabama’s race, when the swamp dwelling Luther Strange proved unelectable the RINOs circled the wagons around a report from the disreputable Washington Post, magically appearing just before the election, to attempt to ensure another Democrat win. How can the never-Trumpers proclaim themselves pure” conservatives when they want a Democrat led socialist paradise?

  32. What’s left out this article is lunatics like Max Boot and the neo-con crowd over at Commentary Magazine. Jon Podhoretz exemplifies the deceit and duplicity that has become the Jewish neo-con community at Commentary as does the three Amigos of Kristol, Stephens, and Rubin.

    • Most neoconservatives orange Jewish, and there are Jewish neoconservatives who don’t take this position, or rather support the president when he does conservative things. Stop being a useful idiots for the left.

      • Useful idiot of the left? Sorry, Ron, but that’s truly stupid. I was very specific in who I highlighted who exemplify the anti-Trump crowd. When you say most you are talking about an infinitesimally small number of an already small number of Jews who support Trump. Check the bylines of most anti-Trump articles. Stop being a useful idiot for the untrue.

      • I hope you realize that people writing political articles are a self-selecting minority. You could go over to front page magazine and plenty of other Publications and find Jewish writers supporting Trump. At least in New York City, Russian Jews were as supportive of Donald Trump, if not more so, than White Catholics.
        Bringing ethnicity and religion into this in an ignorant manner does make you useful idiot for the left. That allows them to point and claim anti-semitism. The fact that you do so in an ignorant manner just makes it pathetic, because you can’t actually defend your position to someone who knows anything about it.

      • I do and often and I believe David Horowitz is even more blunt about neoconservatives like Bill Kristol (Renegade Jew May 2016). Since I am extremely well read I am aware of who does and doesn’t support Trump. I stand by my previous statement. I made a very specific and direct charge and you are inflating that to encompass all, which is, in your repetitive words, ignorant. I am defending it and so far you have said nothing of any redeeming value that informs me otherwise beyond infantile attempts to smear me.

        The politics of your paranoid hatred is the crutch of a mental cripple where you protect the source of your dysfunction by projecting it onto phantom enemies.

  33. The vast, vast majority of the citizenry at large, including Republicans have never heard of any of these bozos. Each and everyone of them is aboard The Midnight Train to Political Oblivion and they aren’t coming back. Meanwhile, the Deplorable Trump Train rockets into the future on the back of BOOMING Donaldnomiics.

  34. It’s so sickening that they sold themselves as true conservatives in the past and lectured the rest of us about ‘values’ we needed to protect only to abandon any pretense of values themselves when they saw a chance for power. Bill Kristol will not be ashamed of his leftist turn because he has lost all sense of shame, all narcissists do.

  35. The ABC affiliate in Birmingham Alabama couldn’t find a single likely voter who believes the allegations against Judge Roy Moore. That’s gotta tellya something about the DC Neverland state of mind. The DC Swamp Dwellers are doing all the wrong things perfectly. It is a beautiful thing: http://lucianne.com/thread/?artnum=927825

  36. There’s a huge amount of projection going on in neverTrump land. They themselves are what they claim to find objectionable about Trump – that is, they are ignorant bigots, animated by nothing more than the desire to hurt certain racial, ethnic, or social groups. In this they are identical to the left.

    where do these NeverTrumpers go from here? There seems to be a gradual split in the ranks and a recognition that the most fervent among them have lost their senses.

    I don’t think they have lost their senses, they’ve simply dropped the mask.. Most of these people were never conservatives in the first place, in fact they’ve hated conservatives since long before Trump came along. That’s been made much more obvious of late, but the signs were always there for anyone who bothered to look. Most of these so-called “conservatives” were big fans of George W Bush – the most unconservative Republican President ever to sit in the Oval office. They were also fans of Mitch Romney and John McCain, whose sins against conservatism are far too numerous to list here. And, to an extent which has not been acknowledged, they were fans of Barack Obama and his “fundamental transformation” of America. All of these people have attacked Trump with a ferocity which they never displayed towards Obama. In fact they were downright respectful and even admiring of Obama.

  37. Good to see that from Erickson. There is one admission we need to hear from all of the #NeverTrump rump. Doesn’t #NeverTrump mean #4verHillary? Be like Beck and just flip. Be a proud Hillaroid. She could use the back-up.

  39. Great piece, full of truths about neo-liberal former conservatives.

  40. They might get more listening if their attacks didn’t come across like just another way to marginalize us deplorables. With all that writing talent, they were unable to convince anyone outside of the choir to embrace conservatism. They could’ve used their “NeverTrump” fame as a platform to explain conservatism anew, but instead they aligned themselves with anti-American Resistors. Worse, they wilted against the inanities of the social justice warriors. I’ll keep reading Bret Stephens because he is a unique writer, solid defender of Israel and questioner of the climate change religion, but his suggestion to repeal the Second Amendment was a capitulation to Left and tyranny and a betrayal of constitutionally-grounded conservatism.

  41. While some criticism towards certain individuals may be correct, the gist of this piece is BS imo. I am a Never Trumper who named my daughter after the greatest president in my lifetime….Ronald Reagan. I have never voted for a Democrat and voted for Gillespie. But I believed before he was elected and even more now, Trump is ultimately bad for the GOP. Sometimes, like a vaccination, you have to use some of the poison to inoculate from the disease. It might take a few Democrat wins for “conservatives” (two can play this game) to realize the damage Trump has done and is doing. You don’t win long-term by playing to 35% of the country. And nothing is said about Trump ally Steve Bannon who is blatantly trying to blow up the GOP.

    So many Trump cultists (not the whole of his supporters) use the trope, “they are just Democrat, liberals, progressives, etc. Nonsense. I’m pro-life, pro 2nd amendment, pro-Constitution, pro-decency and pro-honesty. Trump is a consistent liar. I will give him credit when he does something good but if I couldn’t vote for him then, why would I support him now?

    • All of what you wrote has nothing to do with this article.

      This article is about so-called conservatives who are now actively supporting ‘liberal’ causes seemingly just to spite Trump

    • So you are a Never Trumper who still supports other Republicans? So nothing you wrote has any bearing on the premise of the article. Sounds like you just wanted to vent about Trump.

  42. God you people play such a short game.

    Please proceed Governor.

    But I will concede that the grift is real and just like Trump-humpers realized it was time to get paid by hugging him even more tight, there are some on the other side who saw the $’s too.

    Capitalism at its finest, while you struggle to make ends meet.

    • The long game is won by surrendering to the libs on every front?

      • No, it’s realizing your current business model is about to run into the realities of demographic change which you cannot control. Smart conservatives know this fever breaks eventually and those on wrong side of history won’t be treated kindly.

      • So, if demographics change, you abandon conservative/just principles?

        And, what fever? Standing for justice, equality, and the rule of law is a fever?

        Again, you sound like you are calling for surrender. How are you not?

  43. Now that Trump is president for 1 year. Trump has govern like a Conservative, more than the Nevertrump even thought was possible. Yet they still oppose him. So what if Trump is not a Conservative purist? At least he’s 80%, that’s better than most Nevertrumpers who now seem to be advocating for Conservatives to lose on every front

  44. Bill Kristol is so filled with hate half his tweets look like a deranged liberal sent them out. So I guess the cruise is now gone or reduced to a dingy..Kristol name is in several of the papers we are digging through. His hands aren’t clean. I guess look at those that scream the loudest and be prepared for their arrests..

  45. The problem for the never Trumpers is although he is not conservative, he was THE MOST conservative in the class with the exception of Ted Cruz, and they hated him too. So they don’t really have any credibility. The people who claim to be conservative are not, and that’s why everyone ignored them. They are Full of spit

  46. Ed Gillespie wasn’t even a Trump Republican, but a GOPe Republican yet Nevertrumpers couldn’t even back him. So now even GOPe are racist/sexist/white nationalists?

  49. Never Trumpers are modern day versions of the American colony Tories siding with the establishment against the people.

  50. Kristol, Stephens & Rubin only care about Israel. That’s always been the case. Obama was openly hostile so they joined with the Republicans.

    • I appreciate your profound ignorance, but these people have been Republicans for decades. Bill kristol was chief of staff for Dan Quayle. Anti-Semitism destroys the mind and soul. Stop it. Be an adult and do some research. Then be an adult and retract your malarkey, because it only helps the left and only helps these people call Trump supporters anti-Semitic.

      • I agree with you about the amount of Jew bashing in these comments. It is disgusting.

        Also it is true that a lot of Never Trumpers have been in the Republican Party for a while. However that in itself doesn’t make them conservatives. Kristol may have been conservative at one point, before going off the deep end. But Stephens and Rubin have been squishy moderates for quite a while.

  51. I think many of these ‘NeverTrumpers’ define conservatism as meekly going along with the creeping Socialism promoted by the Democrat Party. They’re heavily invested in being the ‘loyal opposition’ rather than fighting back which they see as boorish behavior.

  52. Trump wasn’t my pick for the GOP nominee, but I’ve been generally happy with his actions since the election. While I wish Obamacare repeal had happened and tax reform were far more draconian, I see Trump’s administration as being the most conservative since Reagan, and possibly Coolidge. Plus, he doesn’t let the Left undermine his administration with a slow dribble of slanders and libels.

  53. The entire NeverTrump argument was originally predicated on the notion that Trump was not remotely conservative. Now that he has been more reliably conservative in office than GWB ever was, the NeverTrumpers are left with only personal arguments, which expose how petty they all really are.

  54. Heck, this game was up last Summer when Kristol et al kept looking for someone to run as a “true conservative” even after Trump had the GOP nomination, and wound up with McMullin, who is a conservative in the same sense that Benedict Arnold was an American patriot. When it was pointed out that the only possible way they could affect the election was by throwing a couple of swing states to Clinton and thereby electing her for Obama’s third term, they refused to acknowledge that was in fact the only impact they could have, let alone the obvious inference that it must be what they wanted.

    Lord knows, as a President Trump has some serious flaws. But these people deserve the fate of Benedict Arnold, who moved to England and learned that nobody worth knowing values a traitor, even if the treason was to help their side. Once the fight is over, character and honor count, and Kristol, Rubin and Stephens, among others, have shown their own character flaws.

    For all Trump’s flaws, in a fight I would rather have one of him than a hundred of them.

    btb, every time I read about how Trump can’t fill positions or his campaign took chances on damaged goods such as Manafort and amateurs such as Clovis, I remember who put out that anyone who worked with/for Trump should be forever blackballed from Republican Party contracts or positions. No matter how bad they thought Trump might be, they had a duty as patriots to help their country weather the storm they thought was coming, but they chose ego instead. If it is true that such as Mattis and Kelly and Tillerson took their positions because they feared the country needed them, God Bless them for that sacrifice. And Kristol and the rest can rot in Hell.

  55. It is an interesting coincidence that the loudest Never Trumpers are often Jewish neo-cons. I am sure that is just a coincidence though.

  56. Billy Kristol lost his credibility to me in the ’90s, and Jennifer Rubin never had any. But what happened to Bret Stephens breaks my heart. For years he was my favorite Wall Street Journal columnist, spinning intelligent and persuasive prose on behalf of conservative causes. That all changed when Trump came on the scene, and Stephens began attacking him week after week. A racehorse of a writer became a one-trick pony, and his trick stunk. I didn’t miss him a bit after he left the WSJ for the NY Times. He needs psychiatric help.

  57. It’s an amusing irony that Kristol himself incarnated the fox in the henhouse for horrified NYT staff and readers when he was recruited as a columnist a few years ago. Unlike Stephens, to change the metaphor, Kristol didn’t then change his spots and adopt the paper’s basic articles of faith. He maintained at least that semblance of integrity. The irreducible Never Trumpers have their equivalent in the UK where hardline opponents of Brexit want it to be a failure for Britain in order to vindicate their personal position. At least the Never Trumpers only wish a plague on a political party; the Never Brexit crowd want to doom an entire country. In the UK, the pro-EU BBC is mocked for attaching the “despite Brexit” caveat to any item of news that doesn’t conform to the doomsday narrative forecast by the Remainers. Over at NRO, the Never Trumpers are in the same bind, forced to acknowledge by the unavoidable evidence their readers can see for themselves that Trump gets things right but balancing their admission with a recital of all the things they hate him for and will never forgive. Objectively, the conservative cause is better off with Trump as president than it was with Obama or would have been with Clinton. And no, he’s not remotely a Nazi or even a threat to democracy as the Virginia and NJ elections showed. Britain under May is still more user friendly to 90% of its citizens than it would be under Corbyn and his Trotskyists if Brexit were to fail. The position the Never Trumpers and the UK Remainers have adopted is one of juvenile narcissism where adherence to their own constipated purity is more important than the greater good. It is not an edifying picture.

  58. What is most infuriating to the NeverTrumpers is that the electorate rejected their ‘sage’ advice. Their contempt for Trump shows their contempt for the average person.

  59. Let’s face it, many so-called conservative media outlets are in fact full of liberal hack writers who believe in open borders, single payer health insurance, and America prostrating itself to the UN. It’s pathetic.

  60. Kristol, Rubin and Stephens were NeverConservatives in the first place. They are socially liberal urban neocons who support open borders and cultural liberalism at home and constant meddling abroad in the name of empire and “democracy.” Trump has his problems and is not exactly an ideological conservative either, but in my view he’s done a great service in exposing these termites for what they are. Any sort of conservativism that contains the likes of these 3 ends up a hollowed out version. We are better off without them.

    Let the exorcism of these cretins continue. They should go back to their natural home on the Left where they can look down on the rest of the country openly as they clearly have been doing their entire lives while pretending otherwise in public.

  61. They all should be in the woods since losing to Clintonites and a punk from Kenya !!!
    Do us all a favor, disappear !!!

  62. They are all globalist elitist and believe we should all just bow down to their superior intellect.

  63. Trump supporters: “We support trump because we were marginalized by the establishment!”

    They then proceed to attempt marginalization of anyone who does not support trump.