Taking the veil off of the “Never Trumper” scam

Even though President Trump dominated the 2020 Republican primaries by even greater margins than he did in 2016, many of the so-called political experts are warning us of serious conservative defections from the Trump camp.

This includes a lot of hype over people who were never in the Trump camp in the first place, like former Ohio Governor John Kasich and former HP/Compaq CEO Carily Fiorina saying they will not vote for Trump in November. Kasich is even going to speak for Joe Biden at the Democratic National Convention.

All of this hype skews the reality about Republican and overall conservative support for Trump, which is very strong. The polls show it, and it makes sense considering the overflowing number of longtime favorite conservative policies Trump has enacted. 

But hatred of Trump has apparently made several so-called Never Trump “conservatives” change their minds about many fundamental conservative principles, like gun rights and protecting public safety from violent mobs. Some have even decided to support a Democrat takeover of the Senate.

So what about people like me? That is, people who were humbled by Trump’s early primary victories in 2016 and were forced to not only reassess his chances of winning, (as I did here in June ‘16 predicting his win), but also some of his other proposals that weren’t previously on the conservative radar?

Well, four years later I can happily report that only one of my former conservative principles has been altered. That is my position on trade tariffs, which is no longer 100% negative. I’ve come to see in practicality, not because of any speeches, that tariffs can work and be justified in some cases. To be more honest, I’m even more sold on the idea of decoupling our economy from China which is a minor nuance I admit. But that’s it. Trump’s policies and actual record are otherwise almost completely in line with what I believed as a conservative pre-Trump 2016. Even his disappointing failure to decrease the debt hasn’t changed my aversion to the debt or pushed me to excuse him for his part in that. 

I’m also not excusing his brash behavior or the sloppy way much of his staff has been running the White House at times. But it doesn’t bother me all that much either, because after decades of covering and analyzing American politics I already knew almost every politician has the serious character flaws that it takes to be an elected official in this country. Plus, those professional and precise White House staffs that micromanage everything can be just as scary. Ask anyone who lived through the Nixon presidency.

Politics is hypocrisy by definition. The best we can hope for is hypocrites who are at least effective in achieving what they promise. Every American adult should understand that they don’t really “know” their leaders personally and should stop thinking they do. We should also acknowledge that we’re persuaded as voters by our emotional reactions to candidates much more than their real or imagined records.

If there is any truly objective way for humans to choose a candidate, it should come when we seek out a politician’s real record on our own and judge it based on the principles and policies we believe in. That’s regardless of which candidate is the one who does or doesn’t live up to or achieve them. And from almost any objective measure, this president has achieved almost every key conservative goal supposedly supported by conservatives for decades. 

So what’s the excuse for those few, but overly-spotlighted Never Trump “conservatives” who not only fail to recognize this, but also seem to have jettisoned almost every one of those conservative ideals in response to Trump’s success in achieving them? 

I’ve narrowed it down to three related possibilities: The first is arrogance. 

Remember my headline from my June 2016 column predicting the Trump win? It began with, “I Was WRONG.” That kind of humility is something really lacking in all the Democrat and GOP Trump-haters. Trump’s own confident/arrogant personality is a big turnoff for these folks because the one thing an arrogant person despises the most is another arrogant person. 

This arrogance is very much what seems to be at play for folks like Kasich, Mitt Romney, and even Ann Coulter. Trump’s victory where Romney and Kasich failed is likely an embarrassment to career politicians like them. His brashness overshadows Coulter’s signature persona, etc, 

The second explanation for the small Never Trumpism community’s existence is money. 

Mainstream media outlets love to feature so-called “conservative Republicans” who oppose Trump. I used to help identify people to be hired as network contributor guests, and I can tell you these deals can get pretty lucrative for the folks who grab them. This incentivizes Trump hatred and at least the semblance of changing conservative minds about ALL the things they used to believe in before Trump. It also helps keep a number of these folks in the public eye when Trump’s victory and the new populist tilt of the GOP would otherwise render them completely irrelevant and forgotten.

This financial explanation for Never Trump conservative-to-liberal “conversion” is best exemplified by folks like Jennifer Rubin and Bill Kristol. Would anybody be listening to them today if they weren’t marketing themselves as conservatives who hate Trump? No way. 

Money is also clearly playing a big role for a few less well-known Never Trumpers like Ohio House Speaker and leading Lincoln Project member Larry Householder who was just indicted for allegedly running a $60 million bribery operation.

Finally, the third likely cause of crazy Never Trump ideological flipping is his harsh criticism of the Iraq War. 

Remember that a lot of Republicans and conservatives risked a lot of their reputations on that war and faced years of being called “Nazis” etc. for pushing it. Now, it was one thing to hear that from liberals and Democrats as is always expected. But for a Republican like Trump to call the war a mistake and vow not to repeat it clearly blew the minds of Never Trumpers like Max Boot and it’s apparently a further cause of Kristol’s hate, the Bush family’s coolness, Liz Cheney’s wavering support, and the late John McCain’s descent into insane Steele Dossier pushing. 

I should add that there is a very small subset of the arrogant Never Trumpers who consider themselves too “dignified” to associate with Trump’s brash behavior and unsavory romantic past. They operate under the deluded and destructive notion that our political leaders’ personality, speaking styles, and choreographed public images are more important than policies or results. 

In the end, the Never Trump group’s mania and hate has had almost no effect on the voting public and no influence over the honest critics of his re-election campaign strategies and effectiveness raised by folks like Mike Cernovich and John Cardillo lately.

But people should know where this craziness comes from and how the media has enabled the greed, arrogance, and mental instability of these so-called conservative Trump critics who continue to be unable to put a dent in Trump’s popularity on the right.