What a Never Trumper believes

No wise man has the power to reason away

8 years ago and counting ago, National Review introduced us to Never Trump, a cruise ship where Bill Kristol and the rest of the neocons sold themselves as True Conservatives who stood up to an imposter. The gig must have made them a lot of money because they sold out conservatism.

Its now infamous Against Trump editorial began:

Donald Trump leads the polls nationally and in most states in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. There are understandable reasons for his eminence, and he has shown impressive gut-level skill as a campaigner. But he is not deserving of conservative support in the caucuses and primaries. Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones.

The editorial’s message was clear: Accept no converts to conservativism.

NR ended its editorial, “Some conservatives have made it their business to make excuses for Trump and duly get pats on the head from him. Count us out. Donald Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself.”

Never Trumpers are unapologetically stubborn. I will give them that. But shucks, even Chris Cuomo sees Trump as a human being after the second assassination attempt.

Cuomo said, “I called him today because I am ashamed of how we are responding and not responding to the threats on him.

“And I feel for his family, and I know you can roll your eyes and say, ‘Oh yeah, he asked for it.’ Listen, that’s your choice, and I think it’s a wrong choice. Okay? We got to get out of the judgment business, unless it’s judging ourselves, and you’ve got to start rewarding things that are better.

“And I got to tell you, I don’t know how he stays in the race. I don’t know how he got up after being shot in the head. And you people who try to mitigate that, you need to check yourself. He gets up, pumping his fist, stays in the race, barely even talks about it.”

If after a full term of a Trump presidency and nearly four years of this one, you are a Never Trumper, then this is what you really believe.

You believe abortion not only is a constitutional right but one superior to all other rights. The federal government send protesters at abortion clinics to prison for years. Contrast and compare with the catch-and-release of illegal aliens.

You believe liberals should be running the judiciary. President Trump’s appointment — and a Republican Senate’s confirmation — of three justices ended Roe, overturned Chevron and reined in the EPA. Without Trump, Merrick Garland would be a lifetime justice abusing his power for political purposes.

You believe censorship is constitutional because we must protect butt-hurt feelings and stop people from receiving disinformation — also known as the truth.

You believe the government should be allowed to pay Twitter and others to block a sitting president’s account to prevent him from communicating directly to the people.

You believe that Elon Musk buying Twitter is bad because no one man should control the flow of information; the deep state should.

You believe NATO is unworthy of consultation. The surrender of Afghanistan not only made meaningless the deaths and disabling of thousands of American soldiers, but desecrated the lives of thousands of U.S. allies.

You believe we should protect the borders of Ukraine but not the borders of our own country. Maybe America should do a GoFundMe to pay off Hunter and get a few hundred billions of dollars to build walls north and south, and kick the invaders out.

You believe Israel should stop killing terrorists but Ukraine should fight Russia until the last drop of blood.

You believe that a small town in Ohio should be forced to accept 15,000 immigrants from Haiti (a nation that eradicated its white population in 1804) but Martha’s Vineyard should not take in any of the 52 illegal aliens sent there.

You believe that assassination is justifiable because Trump is just an object that is a danger to the world just as Hillary said. You wanted Hillary to win in 2016. Her reaction to Assassination Attempt No. 2 was, “The late great journalist Harry Evans one time said that journalists should try to achieve objectivity. The object in this case is Donald Trump. His demagoguery. His danger to our country and the world.”

You believe that borrowing money and paying it back with interest constitutes fraud.

You also believe that taking out a loan to pay for college (including travel to Spain and elsewhere) and not paying it back constitutes victimhood and deserves to have the loan forgiven.

You believe we should ban gas stoves, as well as gas-powered cars, as well as plastic straws, as well as pipelines, as well as drilling for oil not because of the debunked climate change myth but because the oil industry is too capitalistic for your tastes.

You believe the only way to keep the economy afloat is by fudging unemployment numbers and flooding the nation with money that comes from thin air.

You believe that men should enter the girls’ bathroom, shower with girls in the locker room, and beat the crap out of a woman to win an Olympic gold medal.

You believe that boys should be castrated and girls have their breasts removed in the name of transgenderism.

You believe that people should be fired or jailed (or both) for calling a man sir or calling a woman ma’am.

You believe that rioters are peaceful protesters while peaceful protesters are insurrectionists unworthy of their constitutional rights to a fair trial.

You believe in everything that Hillary, Biden and Kamala believe in because you worked to elect them over Trump.

Above all, the one thing that you do not believe is that America should be great again.

Now then, the Never Trumpers may deny this. They may say that they hated his opponents and voted for someone else, but ours is a binary electoral process. A voter is either with us or for the other guy.

Never Trumpers may say that they wrote editorials or columns against all these things but actions speak louder than words.

Actions also speak louder than demeanor. The voters are used to Trump. The mean tweets are just that — tweets. They know what the world was like before Trump, during Trump and after Trump. Woo, boy, Natasha, do they know the after.

As president, Trump delivered on many of the things that Never Trumpers vowed they supported over the years. Their continued opposition is not ingratitude. It is an unspoken admission that they lied all along.