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OK, I do have to give Levin credit where it is due to him - he actually did all of those things you mentioned, all in the interest of having a country governed by the founding principles. Thanks for your reminder of this.

My disagreement with him is that he - like virtually all of the other principled Never Trumpers (and I exclude the likes of the Bushes, Romney, McStain and most pols from this category) - failed (and still fails) to understand that sometimes you have to break out of purity mode. NO ONE ever gets everything that they want in politics, and sometimes settling for 70% of what you want is better than fighting for 100% and actually getting nothing. In fact, Reagan himself used that figure to make that same point.

Trump was for and against all of the right things in this campaign, but Levin just didn’t see it (or, maybe, he just didn’t believe it). For fiscal responsibility, for the 2nd Amendment, for an originalist Supreme Court, for energy independence, for trade agreements that help OUR workers, for tax cuts and for regulatory cuts, etc., etc.; against unlimited immigration from ANYWHERE; against immigration of any criminals; against immigration from Moslem countries when we cannot successfully determine that the people in question would make good Americans some day, against abortion on demand, against a weak military, against perpetual wars that bleed our finest young people white and drain our treasury, against undercutting our allies, against interpreting the Constitution as a “living document,” against disorder in the streets for every petty grievance, etc., etc. If those positions are not conservative, then I don’t know what IS conservative - and I simply don’t understand how all of the ideological Never Trumpers (as opposed to the political/self-interested ones) could have missed that...and how he STILL seems to be missing it, with the alternative being Hillary Clinton, Wicked Witch of the NWO Alinskyites.

So, yes, Levin gets kudos from me for what he has done in a positive way for this country - but that does not immunize him for opposing Trump when the ONLY alternative was the next worst thing to literally Lucifer.

Trump was for and against all of the right things in this campaign, but Levin just didn’t see it (or, maybe, he just didn’t believe it). For fiscal responsibility, for the 2nd Amendment, for an originalist Supreme Court, for energy independence, for trade agreements that help OUR workers, for tax cuts and for regulatory cuts, etc., etc.; against unlimited immigration from ANYWHERE; against immigration of any criminals; against immigration from Moslem countries when we cannot successfully determine that the people in question would make good Americans some day, against abortion on demand, against a weak military, against perpetual wars that bleed our finest young people white and drain our treasury, against undercutting our allies, against interpreting the Constitution as a “living document,” against disorder in the streets for every petty grievance, etc., etc. If those positions are not conservative, then I don’t know what IS conservative - and I simply don’t understand how all of the ideological Never Trumpers (as opposed to the political/self-interested ones) could have missed that...and how he STILL seems to be missing it, with the alternative being Hillary Clinton, Wicked Witch of the NWO Alinskyites.

As far as I know, Bush, McCain, and Romney were all acceptable candidates to Levin and other NeverTrumpers. He may have criticized them, but he was willing to endorse them against Gore, Kerry, and Obama. Where was his ideological purity when it came to Bush, McCain, and Romney's countless liberal positions?

The fact that he opposed Trump for his lack of ideological purity while supporting Bush, McCain and Romney in spite of their far greater lack of ideological purity tells me that his opposition and that of the other NeverTrumpers was never about ideology. At best, it was about personalities. At worst, it was because even the "principled" ones were party hacks who resented an outsider not vetted by the RNC barging in on their party.

For fiscal responsibility, for the 2nd Amendment, for an originalist Supreme Court, for energy independence, for trade agreements that help OUR workers, for tax cuts and for regulatory cuts, etc., etc

Levin is criticized for not supporting Trump while, you say, he supported Bush, McCain and Romney who were actually less true to conservative values. But let's look at Levin's support of George Bush. No one has been more critical of George HW Bush and his betrayal of the Reagan revolution than Mark Levin. His principled criticism of all of these men was parallel to is criticism of Donald Trump, he criticize mistakes but distinguished that criticism from support of their candidacies.

Let's consider a few of the list of positives, and there are many legitimate ones, cited to fortify Trump's conservatism. You'll forgive if the observer is skeptical of Trump's commitment to "fiscal responsibility." Putting his biography of bankruptcy aside, and putting aside his "love of debt," it is very difficult to believe that Trump is committed to fiscal responsibility when he advocates massive tax cuts, $1 trillion infrastructure building program, rebuilding the military, a brand-new entitlement, no cuts anywhere in other entitlements like Social Security, and upgrading of the veteran administration. Clearly, this is a recipe at least in the near-term and medium-term for increased debt and fiscal irresponsibility. In order to justify this spending spree coupled with massive tax cuts, Trump has to argue that stimulation package will energize the economy. Maybe so, but not in the short or medium term enough to compensate for federal budget shortfalls.

Let us consider, "trade agreements that help our workers" and whether they are, as opposed for example to tax cuts, orthodox conservative values. Fair and free trade have been staples of the conservative catechism since Ronald Reagan and before. Trump has departed from that view, he might have won the argument but that does not make opposition to him somehow a contradiction of conservatism. Certainly, citing the danger of massive depression if Trump were to make good on his threat to unilaterally slap 35% tariffs on imports is not a betrayal of conservatism and it is arguably a departure of conservative doctrine by Trump.

Let us consider the argument that Trump was " against perpetual wars that bleed our finest young people white and drain our treasury". I recall when I turned against the war in Iraq it generated considerable criticism in this forum. It was not then and it is hardly now conservative catechism to be against that war. Just because I turned against it doesn't make it so and just because Donald Trump turned against it does not make support of the war anti-conservative. Much of the criticism of Trump's position on the war in Iraq, for example, have to do with the dispute about whether or not he was lying about his initial opposition to the war. Again, hardly a touchstone of failing to be conservative to criticize Trump for such a lie.

Those of us who have been falsely accused of being "never Trumper's" frankly do not understand how to define the phrase. I am certainly not a person who opposed Trump after his nomination, and to my knowledge neither was Levin although Levin withheld support which I promised to deliver and in fact did deliver upon his nomination. But I'm not aware that I, Levin, or any thinking conservative in supporting Trump necessarily must surrender his power of discernment or his self-respect. When Trump was wrong and God knows there were many occasions when he spoke or tweeted so irresponsibly that it was unreasonable to condition conservative bona fides on defending Trump. Many of us criticized the gaffe without withdrawing support for the candidacy.

What is a never Trumper? Is it anybody with whom Trump-bots disagree? What is a globalist, is it anybody with whom Trump supporters disagree? We conservatives deplore the left's practice of stealing our language, I deplore the same practice when done by conservatives.

The point is that since the nomination we should all have supported Donald Trump, which I did, which Mark Levin ultimately did and even Ted Cruz, despite outrageous provocation, also ultimately did. Now that he is President-elect Trump, we continue to owe him our support but that does not mean, and never did mean, that we surrender our power of discernment or our self-respect. If they are to be deployed against George HW Bush, George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, they are equally be applied to Donald Trump.