How Never Trumpers Are Becoming Pro-Democracy Republicans
Photo: Jon Cherry/Getty Images
One of the most predictable developments of the post-Trump era was that the small band of anti-Trump conservative intellectuals and Republican officials would quickly melt away. They had been repulsed by Donald Trump’s combination of grotesque character and ideological heterodoxy — opposing American alliances, free trade, and so on – but when given the chance to support Republicans who believed in traditional Reaganite principles and weren’t career criminals, politics would go back to normal and they would return to the fold.
Instead, something surprising has happened. Anti-Trump Republicans are refashioning their identity as pro-democracy conservatives.