It doesn’t sound like there was much to be encouraged about at the “Never Trump” Principles First Summit at the Conrad Hotel in Washington DC this past weekend. Their panel names told the story: “Looking to 2024: Hope and Despair — but Mostly Despair”, “Can the GOP survive?”
Maybe the one ray of light in the collection of former Iraq War cheerleaders was their determination to debate if Ron DeSantis is possibly a worse potential president than Donald Trump. It is so hard to feel any sympathy for this crowd:
“It turns out that once you let the toothpaste out of the tube, so to speak, demagoguery and bigotry and all that, some people like it. It’s hard to get it back.” [Bill] Kristol said. “You can’t just give them a lecture.”
Jesse Helms and Lee Atwater never bothered these folks, but they think Trump is responsible for their problems.
At least for now, they’re allies of anyone who wants America to stay on the rails, but they’re not the kind of allies you want. They’re pathetically weak and completely lacking in confidence. If their lack of self-awareness is appalling, their trustworthiness is more so. But consider the alternative.
The people who convened at the Conrad have little in common with those who attended the Trump coronation ceremony down the river at CPAC. The latter aired a music video of a song the Jan. 6 defendants recorded from prison. The former gave Michael Fanone, the former D.C. police officer who was brutally attacked on Jan. 6, an award (after which he hung around to sign copies of his new book) and introduced Kinzinger, who was one of two Republicans on Congress’s committee investigating the attacks, as its “patron saint.”
I guess I’m glad they’re trying to get organized. Despite myself, I can’t help rooting for these blind squirrels to find an acorn or two.
This quote really captures it:
Turns out that those prone to be drawn to demagoguery and bigotry (authoritarians) are a fairly substantial and loud minority. Give them enough of a taste, and the GOP has been offering increasingly supersized servings, and they’ll want more. The Never Trumpers made this mess. I don’t have much confidence in them helping to clean it up.
Back during the ‘008 campaigns when Palinism was emerging as an early form of Trumpism, I got a sinking feeling that the GOP was going to split down the middle some day, at which point the less rabid of the factions would defect in large numbers to the Dems, make coalitions with centrists and blue dogs, and pull the party to the right–pushing the progressive minority all the way past the margins and for some, into third parties.
I wonder sometimes if it couldn’t happen with the ‘never Trumpers’. Imagine if Liz Cheney announced she was joining the Dems. I could see it going a number of different ways, but a big part of me suspects that the Dem party establishment would be overjoyed, or at least in public. The big question I guess is if Trump still commands 30-35% loyalty in the GOP, is there really no way for the majority remainder to get rid of him? I suppose 2024 is going to be the decision point.