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 nations 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 Trumps skin. And they almost never wholeheartedly support anything that the vast majority of American conservatives do.
And thats 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 nations 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 Trumps 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 45s leadership. Conservatives racked up wins on judges, taxes, regulations, foreign policy and immigration. They learned to accept the presidents 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 Boots book is called The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right. Its not why I left the Republican Party, but why I left the Right. This is at least honest, but at this point Boots 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 thats basically every politician not named Romney or Amash. So thats 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 cant 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. Youre not politically homeless; youve just chosen a new home.
I understand that NeverTrumpers will lose a good deal of cache if we all just acknowledge that they arent conservatives anymore. The initial source of their relevance was that they were going against their own team. But its 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 isnt going to happen. Youd have to expel almost everyone at this point.
So lets 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.
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.
Like David Brooks at the NYTimes
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.
And host cruises.
Welcome to FR.
Marcus errs in saying name conservatives were mostly NTers. They didnt like the idea of a celeb heretofore liberal as a GOP president, but only a small number became NTers once Trumps policy initiatives became real.
But hes correct that they are now liberal Democrats.
Some Neocons turned around into big Trump supporters, like David Horowitz.
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.
Good comments!
I would include the ragazine, National Review as providing impotent support for the Never-Trummpers.
Most #NeverTrumps make a living being Anti-Trump. The left props them up like little b*tches.
Yeah. Horowitz turned years ago.
There is no one more sanctimonious, self-righteous and gullible than the average never Trumper
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.
Aren’t you a little late?
Flick Lives has been a Freeper since
Since Nov 9, 2012
It was a joke about not reading before posting.
Im sure you are familiar with that phenomenon!
Is it just me or does this guy look like he could be a child molester?
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.
He happens to be correct
I know its against the rules to actually read the article. You could learn something if you mistakenly did
Good read
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.
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.
Oh. LOL
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