'Never Trumpers' are having a moment

The “Never Trump” Republicans, a faction that emerged during the 2016 campaign and refused to go away after Donald Trump won — despite being repeatedly mocked as irrelevant — are having a moment in the spotlight. They’re also getting a lot of scorn from both pro-Trump conservatives and progressive Democrats. But could this politically homeless group show the way to a more livable future?

At the Democratic National Convention last week, the “Never Trumpers” were such a visible presence that jokes about two Republican conventions this year popped up on Twitter. The speaker lineup included six notable Republicans, including two former governors — John Kasich of Ohio and Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey — as well as Cindy McCain, wife of the late Arizona Senator and presidential candidate John McCain.

Meanwhile, on the convention’s last day, more than 70 former national security officials in Republican administrations released a letter affirming their intent to vote for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and their belief that Trump is unfit for office. And during the Republican National Convention this week, the Lincoln Project, an outfit run by former GOP operatives, is running a 30-second spot lambasting Trump. (Disclosure: I translated a few lines of script for a Russian-language voice-over in a Lincoln Project ad, at no pay.)

In Twitter comments, many Democrats have grudgingly admitted that the Lincoln Project ads are better than anything Democratic strategists have produced. Trump may agree, judging by his sniping about them. Their key message is that the Trump presidency undermines cherished American values: patriotism, prosperity, optimism. It hits home.

Pro-Trump or Trump apologist Republicans have long dismissed “Never Trumpers” as elitists and has-beens. Yet they often seem vitriolically obsessed with what they claim is an insignificant clique.  

More recently, some of the worst vitriol has come from left-wing Democrats. Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson, a longtime GOP strategist, took a brutal drubbing during the Stephen Colbert-produced political comedy show “Tooning Out the News,” where he was lampooned as a grifter who had championed politicians no better than Trump. Progressive publications such as The Nation and The New Republic have warned that “Never Trumpers” have a sinister agenda: to infiltrate the Democratic Party and pull it to the right.

There’s no question that many Trump-loathing Republicans share the blame for GOP problems that ushered in the current crisis — from overconfident foreign interventionism that courted backlash to dalliances with the aggrieved populism that morphed into Trumpism. Some of them are clearsighted enough to admit it and learn from the errors.

But regardless of personal motives and past sins, what really worries the left about “Never Trumpers” is their influence. In The New Republic, Yale professor Samuel Moyn argues that they have “won” by persuading establishment Democrats that Sen. Bernie Sanders represented a Trump-like menace and helping centrist Democrats hold off the left. Moyn concludes that “[t]he legacy of Never Trump so far is stopping progress, rather than saving democracy.”

Moyn probably gives "Never Trumpers" too much credit. (Sanders was stopped in large part by Southern Black voters, not a group likely to be influenced by disgruntled Republicans.) But in a time when the left is associated with dubious causes like defunding the police and with destructive street unrest, the Democratic Party’s resistance to the pull of radicalism looks like a winning move, not only for Democrats but also for America.

If "Never Trumpers" had a hand in this, more power to them. Perhaps, with their help, a resounding defeat of Trump at the polls can also help the GOP recover sanity.

Cathy Young is a contributing editor to Reason magazine.

By Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.