Can the Never-Trump Coalition Last?
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George F.
Will joined The Washington Post when Richard Nixon was president, and he’s been espousing the same cerebral brand of conservatism twice a week ever since.
His record doesn’t leave much room for surprise.
And yet, there Will was on September 16, encouraging South Carolina voters to elect not Darline Graham, the Donald Trump protégé and newly appointed Republican senator vying for a complete term, but Annie Andrews , a Democrat running on a platform that includes abortion rights, expanded health entitlements, and higher wages for workers.
Around the same time, Karl Rove —who’s been deeply enmeshed in Republican politics since he was a teenager in the 1960s— announced that this fall he would vote for a Democrat for only the second time in his life rather than support Bo French, the GOP nominee for Texas railroad commissioner, following racist remarks French made about South Asian students at the University of Texas. (Rove didn’t couch his remarks as a commentary on Trump, but the president correctly understood it as pushback on Trump ism , and attacked Rove.) Each of these record-scratch moments is a distinctive product of the Trump era.
The desire to resist the president continues to create some strange bedfellows, but the question is whether this alliance can survive the end of the Trump presidency—and, if not, what will become of its parts.
Over the past decade, disgust with Trump has led many Republicans and conservatives to disavow him or the GOP—some over policy (for example, Trump’s critique of free trade), others over character (say, the Access Hollywood video), and still others over some combination thereof.
Some who opposed Trump in 2016 made their peace once he won the election.
In January 2016, National Review gathered a range of conservative writers in an “Against Trump” package.
Today, many of those writers have broken for Trump, and the magazine generally supports the president.
Others, however, have remained firm—those now known as “never-Trumpers.” Five years ago, my colleague David Frum quoted a common dismissal : “Never Trump is not a political party.
It is a dinner party.” But, as Frum wrote, raw numbers understate never-Trumpers’ impact.
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