The future for us Never Trumpers

This past week historian Joshua Tait wrote this in The Bulwark:

Without a serious reckoning with conservatism’s sins and blind spots, the great temptation of Never Trump will be to reconcile with Trump’s enablers when the Democrats inevitably retake the White House. It is by no means guaranteed, but it is quite plausible there will be a rapprochement on the right united in opposition to Joe Biden or whoever is the next Democrat to sit in the Oval Office, especially once Trump leaves the political scene. A sincere reflection on the dark sides of conservatism—including those that some Never Trumpers failed to counter, or even facilitated—is necessary to salvage the American right from Trump so it can perform the vital democratic task of keeping the monsters at bay.

Precisely.

Donald Trump's utter unfitness to be President has been apparent to anyone with an ounce of sense who had simply been paying attention from the moment the possibility of his seeking the office was first raised (doubtless by him).  His actually reaching that office was so absurd a notion that it wasn't worth considering.

If he won the 2016 Republican nomination it would be a renunciation of every decent and sensible thing the GOP had ever stood for.  A political party cannot decompensate to that point and survive, at least as anything resembling its former self.  And a nation could not possibly elect such a man without having lost its mind. Or else, if what actually happened somehow occurred: if the other party was foolish enough to nominate an abrasive and unpopular candidate so disliked that people would be willing to overlook Mr. Trump's disqualifying liabilities to vote against, and a perfect storm of other freakish circumstances occurred that would render even a political novel utterly unbelievable.

It couldn't happen. If it did, it would be because everything had come unglued, and America would face four years being led by an utter incompetent whose term in office would inevitably lead to disaster. When Mr. Trump was elected, I considered his impeachment inevitable because he was, after all, Donald Trump, and could not avoid messing things up on a historic scale.

I was right about that part. But I didn't count on the Republican party and the conservative movement putting partisanship above patriotism and principle, and selling out so completely to an incompetent, authoritarian, thoroughly unconservative aberration like Donald Trump. I thought far better of them.

I was wrong.

His capture of the 2016 Republican nomination would have been impossible if opposition to him hadn't been divided eleven ways between others mostly far better qualified than he to be president. Throughout most of the primaries, he was pulling about a quarter of the vote (it increased to about a third at the end). Never in the post-McGovern era in which primaries and caucuses decide things has a party's eventual nominee actually received a majority of the votes unless he was an incumbent.  But a plurality of the popular votes nearly always adds up to a majority at the convention, and from the start, Trump had more people voting for him than anyone else. Trump's crude, abrasive, conspiracy-theorizing, simplistic solutions, often crackpot style, and populist iconoclasm appealed to enough marginal people including many who didn't ordinarily vote to draw them into his camp. That, combined with the abnormally large field, made Mr. Trump's nomination possible. It was a fluke. In ordinary years, it could never have happened.

His election was also a fluke. He had no "ground game" to speak of, believing with characteristic hubris that his own greatness was enough. Contrary to popular belief, the polls were actually pretty accurate, though some more so than others. Hillary Clinton did, indeed, win the popular vote. But the freakish pattern of narrow victories in those states he needed to win a majority of the Electoral College made all the difference. Far more than, say, Harry Truman or Lyndon Johnson or Gerald Ford, to whom the label has been applied because they succeeded to the presidency rather than being elected, Donald Trump is an accidental president.

But his presidency is no less historical and consequential for being an accident. He is no conservative, as that term is generally understood. He was a liberal Democrat right up until a year or two before he decided to run for President as a Republican. He was pro-choice until then, too, and outspoken so. But he never did make the adjustment to free trade. Big government and lavish spending no particular terrors for him. unless it's helpful at the moment for him to be appalled at them. Whereas at least since the late Fifties conservatives had stood for the muscular defense of American interests in the world and opposition to the imperialism and mischief-making of Moscow, Trump's revival of the ancient and long-discredited pre-World War II slogan "America First" has caused the Russian state media to describe his foreign policy as "healthy American isolationism." And his admiration of dictators, strongmen, and tyrants has caused him to embrace Vladimir Putin as his beau ideal. In fact, Russian state media have also referred to him- humorously, but disturbingly, even so- as "a Russian asset."

Other Republican presidents have been antagonistic toward the mainstream media, but it's hard to imagine either of the Bushes or Jerry Ford actually calling them "the enemy of the people." His acquaintance with the Constitution conservatives treats almost as a holy text is to obviously and embarrassingly slight that one doubts whether he has ever actually read the document he swore at his inauguration fo "preserve, protect, and defend." He regards opposition to or even disagreement with either his program or himself as inherently illegitimate.

Character? A big deal for conservatives. Trump, on the other hand, has a  well-established history as an unethical businessman. One might argue that one might be an effective president despite a blind spot in the area of sexual ethics, as John F. Kennedy proved, But Trump outdoes JFK, being a confessed habitual molester of women. He lies with a frequency and apparent relish previously unknown even in American politics. He claims that the Bible is his favorite book, but seems utterly unfamiliar with it, and criticism of anything he says or does inevitably sets off a tweetstorm of childish personal abuse. He regards opposition to his program or two himself as inherently illegitimate. However much his supporters may squirm at the characterization of Mr. Trump as an "authoritarian," there is no other word that applies to the leader of a party and a movement that once emphasized limited government and personal freedom.

But he is the President of the United States, and while I never would have believed it, the Republican Party and the conservative movement have by and large abandoned the things they traditionally stood for and embraced not only Trump but also his values. Tait describes that process in his article, a review of the new book Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites, in which  Robert P. Saldin and Steven M. Teles detail the whole incredible process and describe and discuss that minority on the right who resisted temptation and stuck to their philosophical guns.

In one fell swoop, Donald Trump has turned the conservative movement and the Republican Party into everything that the Democrats and the left have been accusing it of being all along. As Tait observes, the racism and authoritarianism and cruelty and lack of empathy which Republicans once protested were libels on themselves and their program are now embraced with a wink and a nod as a badge of honor, even if not openly admitted to.

They have always been there as an element of American conservatism, despite the efforts of respectable conservatives and honorable Republicans to deny and disown them. However embarrassing it may have been to the sophisticated, philosophical, high information policy wonks and political philosophers and journalists and candidates, Archie Bunker has been a major part of the Republican coalition at least since the Nixon administration and to some degree even before. And now, he's running the show. He exemplifies and defines the Trumpified conservative movement and the Republican Party.

But Donald Trump will not be president forever. Anything can happen, but I remain confident that Joe Biden will defeat him in November; Mr. Trump's continuing tone-deafness and rhetorical blunders, combined with the collapse of the Obama economy for which he tried with some success to take credit and especially his ongoing bungling of the COVID-19 pandemic seem to me to make that more and more likely as time goes on. Perhaps I'm an idealist, but I cannot believe that the American voter will allow him a second term in the White House, and this time deliberately. It almost seems disrespectful of them to think that they might.

But if he is defeated, it will not be what 1964 was, a chastening disaster causing the Republican Party to regain its senses and repudiate a temporary jaunt into the realm of extremism and ideological fantasy as an aberration. The Reagans and the Fords and the Bushes and the Romneys and McCains will not resume control of the party and return it to its traditional principles. It will probably be a fairly close defeat. Joe Biden will be in the White House for four years, but Donald Trump will not go gently into oblivion. He may even decide to run again in 2024. He certainly will continue to call Fox and Friends regularly and tweet up a storm, stirring up the pot whenever he can.

The grownups will not be in a position to restore the party to what it once was. Mr. Trump, if he seeks to be a Republican Grover Cleveland and serve two non-consecutive terms, may not get the nomination. A more responsible figure on the far right like Ted Cruz or Mike Pence may get the nod. Either of those men or several other men and women who could conceivably be nominated by a post-Trump Republican Party, might very well gently turn the Republican Party and the conservative movement back onto its traditional path, though more ideologically rigid than in the past.

In short, the next GOP nominee may well be an intelligent and honorable man or woman who might be too inflexible for some tastes but still seem like a refreshing drink of water on a hot day to honorable and sensible Americans after Donald Trump. But whether he's voted out in November or retires in 2024 as, incredibly, a two-term president, Donald Trump will still have happened. Ugly, uncaring, dishonorable, mean-spirited, and just plain stupid things which have been lurking in the DNA of conservatism and Republicanism will have expressed themselves and become dominant traits, having been brought to expression by Donald Trump's time in the White House and legitimized by the embrace of conservative politicians and journalists and the Republican rank-and-file. There is no going back. However accidental his ascension to power, and however much an aberration, Donald Trump has changed the Republican Party forever- and not for the better.

However attractive Joe Biden might be as a less-than-ideal alternative to the utterly unacceptable Mr. Trump, we Never Trumpers are not going to like him much once he takes office. We may vote for him this time- I certainly plan to- but the change in administration will leave us still in opposition. With Mr. Trump's obnoxious person out of the picture, the temptation to rejoin the Republican Party and rally behind Cruz or Pence will be overwhelming. It will seem like the natural thing to do. Although both of those gentlemen are well to my right, I would have voted for either of them without hesitation if he, rather than Mr. Trump, had been nominated in Cleveland.

Would we be welcomed back? Not by the fanatics, to be sure, and maybe not by a great many Republicans- at least at first. But the instinct for self-preservation will be strong, and however small we band of holdouts might be we are numerous enough- as I think the Republican Party will learn in November- to have a major impact on the outcome of elections. Eventually, I think everyone will admit that whatever choices anyone made about whether or not to support Mr. Trump, he was certainly problematic, and a bit of an aberration, and anyway all of that is over now and while we may not agree on everything, the things that divided us back in 2016 are in the past, and that the best thing for all concerned would be to let bygones be bygones and unite again against our common opponent.e

And thus, we will miss the point- and allow the ugly virus that has erupted onto the face of conservatism and of the Republican Party like huge, disfiguring cold sore to melt back into its nervous system to hide to emerge again another day.

Most Never Trumpers would feel a great deal better about Ted Cruz or Mike Pence than about Joe Biden. And Biden, I strongly suspect, will be the last moderate nominated by a Democratic Party that has been lurching leftward as much as the GOP has lurched rightward. It's possible that Amy Klobuchar, especially if Biden selects her as his running-mate, might succeed him as the Democratic nominee in 2024, though I suspect that he will pick Kamala Harris. Someone like Harris or Pete Buttigieg might be nominated, someone further to the left but still somewhat in touch with reality and less strident and personally obnoxious than Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But the future of the Democratic Party seems to me to lie on the far left, just as the future of the Republicans is with the far right.  Someday Donald Trump won't be around to exploit and exacerbate our divisions and our increasing polarization, but that doesn't mean that they won't still continue.

Many see the intention of people like me to vote for Joe Biden and even the active role played by some Never Trumpers in the Democratic primaries and caucuses in getting him the nomination, though, as an indication that many of us might drift into the Democratic Party and help resist its leftward tendency.  Theoretically, that could make the future of the Democratic Party one more favorable for the Klobuchars than for the Ocasio-Cortez types. Perhaps, though I'm skeptical. At the very least, the politically correct and ideologically rigid orthodoxy of the Democratic Party would have to loosen up a bit for us to become the nucleus of a renewed Democratic center that might keep the grownups in charge of the Party of Jefferson.

Some will doubtless take that route. But I suspect that for most Never Trumpers, the temptation to forgive and forget and treat Trump and Trumpism as over and done with will be too strong to resist. Especially if Mr. Trump were, after all, to be obliterated in a Biden landslide somehow, it might be quite easy for most of us to see a role for ourselves in rebuilding on the wreckage.

But the genie is out of the bottle. The tendency within the Republican Party and conservatism exemplified by Donald Trump- the nativism, the clear but sometimes subtle and always denied racism, the authoritarianism, the cruelty, the lack of empathy, the crudeness, the fanaticism, the fondness for simplistic answers to complex problems, the conspiracy-mongering, the exultation of ignorance and the demonization of knowledge and expertise- has been there, lurking beneath the surface but suppressed by the more respectable folks who were actually in charge and the decent majority for decades.  But now, most of that decent majority has made a deal with the devil. Honest Republicans will no longer be able to dismiss all of those characterizations as partisan hyperbole and Democratic slander. Not after four years of openly embracing them.

Those in the Republican Party and the conservative movement who have embraced Donald Trump have permanently defined themselves as allies of those things. The smell is not going to wash off, and it will take a very long time to wear off, at least without a clear and public repudiation of Donald Trump and all he stands for and an admission that supporting the ugly and unconservative things he advocates even as a tactical move was a mistake. The only way the Republican Party can ever redeem itself in my eyes is by cutting the malignancy out, repudiating the alt-right, the bigots, the tinfoil-hatters, and the Know-Nothings and breaking decisively Trumpism. And I don't see that happening, even in the wake of a hypothetical Biden landslide.

Until and unless it happens, I cannot ever again be a Republican. To be sure, I'll vote for individual Republicans. But I cannot identify myself with a party that is unable to reject the ugly things it has embraced in the last four years.

Nor do I see a future with the Democrats. No influx of conservatives and centrists from the Never Trump movements is going to reverse the ideological rigidity of the Democratic Party or much delay its own ongoing drift into authoritarian intolerance of those who disagree with it and hysterical extremism. I continue to see America's best home in a new third party of the center, perhaps more diverse than either of the others ideologically and centered on compromise and finding practical solutions rather than on bashing others and coercing them to conform to its own worldview.

But I see no stampede in that direction despite the obvious need for a responsible third option. The two-party system is strong in America, and we as a nation seem remarkably averse to recognizing how much it's to blame for the mess we're in.

How will the Never Trump movement react once Donald Trump is gone? Many will make their peace with an unrepentant Republican party, as Tait predicts. Some will become eccentric and barely-tolerated Democrats, and become outcasts in a different party. For myself, there are worse things than standing alone, and fighting for what my conscience tells me is right.