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Please Stop Calling NeverTrumpers Conservatives
The Federalist ^ | May 27, 2020 | David Marcus

Posted on 05/27/2020 2:37:43 PM PDT by Kaslin

They are just plain old Democrats now.

For nearly five years most of our nation’s largest and most powerful news media outlets have given so-called NeverTrump conservative pundits an outsized voice in our political landscape. Figures such as Bill Kristol, Max Boot, Tom Nichols, Jennifer Rubin, Ana Navarro, and Rick Wilson do their turns on TV creating the illusion that there is some huge constituency of anti-Trump conservatives. There is not. In fact, these people are no longer conservatives in any real sense.

Almost all of these pundits are now mainstream Democrats. They support Joe Biden, and many support voting a straight Democratic ticket. Many are involved with the Lincoln Project and its bizarre psychological warfare TV ads that they are certain get under Trump’s skin. And they almost never wholeheartedly support anything that the vast majority of American conservatives do.

And that’s fine. People change political stripes all the time, and in many ways it is a sign of an open mind. But for news outlets to continue pretending that these people are conservative is a great disservice to their audiences and the nation’s political dialogue.

The fact is that nearly all conservative commentators were at some point NeverTrump. In February of 2016, National Review, the bible of the conservative movement, ran a NeverTrump issue, in which a broad array of conservatives condemned Trump’s candidacy. Over the course of his presidency though, most became either Trump supportive or at least tolerant of Trump.

The basic reason for this change of heart, and it is essentially a change of heart, not a change of political philosophy, was that the sky did not fall under 45’s leadership. Conservatives racked up wins on judges, taxes, regulations, foreign policy and immigration. They learned to accept the president’s abrasiveness.

The people who have actually changed their political philosophies are the still die hard NeverTrumpers. About the only thing they have stayed loyal to is their disdain of Trump and their trust in a neoliberal world order that Trump threatens. But on a host of issues such as gun rights, race, abuses of power by the Obama administration and many others, the NeverTrumpers have essentially come around to thinking the Democrats have been right all along.

This is why Boot’s book is called “The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right.” It’s not why I left the Republican Party, but why I left the Right. This is at least honest, but at this point Boot’s politics are essentially a carbon copy of those of every member of NeverTrump. Put simply, these people are not conservative anymore.

NeverTrumpers have a fantasy that Trump will lose badly in November and they will purge the GOP of all of his sycophantic enablers, but in their eyes that’s basically every politician not named Romney or Amash. So that’s not ever going to happen. If Republicans lose the White House they will not reward the ex-conservatives who helped it happen with leadership in the party.

So the natural political home for the NeverTrumpers at this point is obviously the Democratic Party. As the presidential primary showed us, there are few actual moderate voices in the party, which has been given over to Green New Deals and “Medicare for All.” Perhaps the NeverTrumpers can help create a wing of the Democratic Party less friendly to socialism.

But in the meantime they are supporting a wildly left wing Democratic Party. You can’t be a Yankees fan who wants them to lose in the playoffs to the Red Sox. If you are a well-known political pundit working to elect Democrats, you are a Democrat. You’re not politically homeless; you’ve just chosen a new home.

I understand that NeverTrumpers will lose a good deal of cache if we all just acknowledge that they aren’t conservatives anymore. The initial source of their relevance was that they were going against their own team. But it’s not their team anymore. Surely they are talented enough writers and thinkers that they can do more than ride that one-trick pony forever.

Whatever happens in November, the GOP is never going to return to being the party of Bush and Romney. NeverTrump dreams of expelling every drop of populism and nationalism, but that isn’t going to happen. You’d have to expel almost everyone at this point.

So let’s just please call them what they are. They are liberal Democrats. That they may have once been conservatives is unremarkable, and at this point no longer implies any special significance to their standard, run of the mill Democratic talking points. NeverTrump is no longer a thing, and we should really stop pretending that it is.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: billkristol; jenniferrubin; maxboot; nationalreview; nevertrump
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To: Pollster1

I’m with you. Was worried that Trump was a liberal Trojan horse. But in reality it was Bush that was. Romney, Ryan, McCain too.


21 posted on 05/27/2020 3:13:21 PM PDT by Fledermaus (ONLY A MORON THINKS 6 FEET IS A MAGIC NUMBER!)
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To: Luke21

Like David Brooks at the NYTimes


22 posted on 05/27/2020 3:14:23 PM PDT by Fledermaus (ONLY A MORON THINKS 6 FEET IS A MAGIC NUMBER!)
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To: Kaslin

Neocon NeverTrumpers were never really conservatives. They were planted into the GOP to influence policy in certain directions, then left in a huff when it looked like Trump was not going to use them as any sort of policy gurus.


23 posted on 05/27/2020 3:14:51 PM PDT by PapaBear3625 ("Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." -- Voltaire)
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To: AnotherUnixGeek

And host cruises.


24 posted on 05/27/2020 3:15:09 PM PDT by Fledermaus (ONLY A MORON THINKS 6 FEET IS A MAGIC NUMBER!)
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To: Flick Lives

Welcome to FR.

Marcus errs in saying name conservatives were mostly NTers. They didn’t like the idea of a celeb heretofore liberal as a GOP president, but only a small number became NTers once Trump’s policy initiatives became real.

But he’s correct that they are now liberal Democrats.


25 posted on 05/27/2020 3:15:59 PM PDT by jjotto (“Blessed are You LORD, who crushes enemies and subdues the wicked.”)
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To: Fledermaus

Some Neocons turned around into big Trump supporters, like David Horowitz.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/20/donald-trump-david-horowitz-stephen-miller-family-separation-border-policy

Then again, Horowitz experienced a rude awakening of how bad the Left was, when a good friend was murdered by the Black Panthers, and he rejected the Left totally from that point.


26 posted on 05/27/2020 3:19:19 PM PDT by PapaBear3625 ("Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." -- Voltaire)
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To: AnotherUnixGeek

Good comments!
I would include the ragazine, National Review as providing impotent support for the Never-Trummpers.


27 posted on 05/27/2020 3:28:10 PM PDT by Cuttnhorse (Never fear the cow)
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To: Kaslin

Most #NeverTrumps make a living being Anti-Trump. The left props them up like little b*tches.


28 posted on 05/27/2020 3:29:23 PM PDT by shanover (...To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.-S.Adams)
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To: PapaBear3625

Yeah. Horowitz turned years ago.


29 posted on 05/27/2020 3:30:28 PM PDT by Fledermaus (ONLY A MORON THINKS 6 FEET IS A MAGIC NUMBER!)
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To: Kaslin

There is no one more sanctimonious, self-righteous and gullible than the average never Trumper


30 posted on 05/27/2020 3:34:16 PM PDT by cyclotic (The most dangerous people are the ones that feel the most helpless)
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To: Pollster1
One of my favorite political commentators, Victor Davis Hanson, was strongly opposed to the unelectible and undignified Trump until mid-2016.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Ronald Reagan was the candidate I voted for in the 1980 general election. I did not vote for him in the Tennessee primary, because I thought he was just an actor. But when he ran for reelection in 1984 I voted for him in the Tennessee primary and then in November in the general election.

I did the same for George W.Bush 43. I did not vote for Donald Trump in the primaries and actually had to fight with myself. I defended Ted Cruz a lot from freepers because they were against him because he was born in Canada to a natural born US citizen from Delaware. Many thought he was not eligible for the presidency. I am sure he would have been told if he had not been eligible.

I did not vote Ted Cruz but I had nothing against him. I voted for Marco Rubio, because I liked what he had to say. Many did complain because his parents came from Cuba, but he was born in Miami, which made him a natural born citizen.

Now to Donald Trump. I had to fight with myself at first because of his behavior, bot over time he made sense to me. So when it was time who to vote for in the general election as he would surely get the nomination, I decided to vote for Donald Trump, which I did. We had on March 3 our primary in Tennessee and voted for the people President Trump needs in the November election and I will vote for him again on November 2.

31 posted on 05/27/2020 3:38:02 PM PDT by Kaslin
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To: jjotto

Aren’t you a little late?

Flick Lives has been a Freeper since

Since Nov 9, 2012


32 posted on 05/27/2020 3:49:19 PM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

It was a joke about not reading before posting.

I’m sure you are familiar with that phenomenon!


33 posted on 05/27/2020 3:53:03 PM PDT by jjotto (“Blessed are You LORD, who crushes enemies and subdues the wicked.”)
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To: Kaslin

Is it just me or does this guy look like he could be a child molester?


34 posted on 05/27/2020 3:55:22 PM PDT by LeonardFMason (Lou Dobbs)
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To: Kaslin

Foreign nationals cannot give birth to natural born citizens.
They have children that are whatever they are, if they are born here they are awarded US citizenship, but are not naturally Americans because they are not SOLELY Americans.


35 posted on 05/27/2020 3:56:10 PM PDT by Lurkinanloomin (Natural Born Citizens Are Born Here of Citizen Parents_Know Islam, No Peace-No Islam, Know Peace)
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To: jmaroneps37

He happens to be correct

I know it’s against the rules to actually read the article. You could learn something if you mistakenly did


36 posted on 05/27/2020 4:01:41 PM PDT by Nifster (I see puppy dogs in the clouds)
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To: Kaslin

Good read


37 posted on 05/27/2020 4:01:53 PM PDT by Nifster (I see puppy dogs in the clouds)
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To: Metrobank

They were political opportunists. They were never conservatives although they made all the right moves to show they were. It is doubtful they could have gotten very far in the Democratic Party given how entrenched the establishment is in that party . They chose the Republican Party because it gave them quicker access to policy making . It appears there a lot of these kind of folks in DC. I never trusted them.


38 posted on 05/27/2020 4:12:48 PM PDT by Destroyer Sailor (Revenge is a dish best served cold)
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To: Kaslin
"I understand that NeverTrumpers will lose a good deal of cache.....

Cache - a collection of items of the same type stored in a hidden or inaccessible place.

Cachet - the state of being respected or admired; prestige.

I hate being the spelling Gestapo but this error pisses me off, coming from an ostensibly intelligent source.

39 posted on 05/27/2020 4:26:09 PM PDT by SnuffaBolshevik
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To: jjotto

Oh. LOL


40 posted on 05/27/2020 4:35:17 PM PDT by Kaslin
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