‘Never Trump’ GOP deserves thanks
But no Cabinet posts or court seats
Key “Never Trump” Republicans have figured out something obvious that eluded them in 2016: Stopping Donald Trump requires getting behind the one person who can finish the job — the Democratic nominee for president. They should be rewarded for this insight with the defeat of Donald Trump. And that’s it.
The Lincoln Project is made up of some of the right’s top political operatives and anti-Trump voices. They include George Conway, Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson, who has nailed Trump’s reverse-Midas touch with the coinage “Everything Trump Touches Dies” — earning him, in turn, a couple of bestsellers and a lot of coin. Before he decided to turn fire on his party’s standard-bearer, the GOP strategist helped elect lots of Republicans and torched lots of Democrats, including Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, a triple-amputee Vietnam War veteran whom Wilson helped brand as soft on terror.
In 2016, Wilson took on Trump by putting former CIA officer Evan McMullin on the ballot as a “conservative” presidential candidate in 11 states. McMullin got the fifth most votes for president behind Hillary Clinton, Trump, Gary Johnson and Jill Stein.
In 2020, The Lincoln Project isn’t aiming to back a future answer to a trivia question. Instead, its members are “dedicated to defeating President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box.” And they’ve wisely endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden because “electing Democrats who support the Constitution over Republicans who do not is a worthy effort.”
Anyone who shares the goal of not spending the rest of our lives being ruled by assorted members of the Trump family should be grateful enough for the project’s effort.
Its ads go viral almost instantly. Its framing of “America or Trump” helps make the election a referendum on a disastrous presidency that has led us into needless horrors, including the worst job losses of the century. And its takedown of the Confederate flag as a “symbol of treason” makes me want to holler, “FINALLY!” Finally, some members of the party of Lincoln have called out the right’s consecration of a traitorous army that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of U.S soldiers in order to perpetuate the enslavement of millions of black Americans.
Zero obligation to GOP
For this service, these once and future Republicans deserve the defeat of Donald Trump, the preservation of our democracy and the thanks of a grateful nation. And nothing more. Democrats should feel zero obligation to put a Never Trumper in the Cabinet or on any federal court. Maybe Wilson should get a Kennedy Center Honor for coming up with “Cheeto Jesus,” but that’s it.
No olive branch should be offered beyond a joint effort to reform the executive power that allowed Trump to veer the presidency so close to dictatorship.
Any appeasement beyond that could be disastrous.
Why would I be so ungracious? I have 69,498,516 and 65,915,795 reasons. That’s how many votes the Obama-Biden ticket got in 2008 and 2012.
And though 2020 might turn out to be the most unpredictable year in American history, there is one prediction I can make with absolute assurance — Joe Biden will win the popular vote by millions.
It’s easy to forget how infinitesimally small Trump’s margin of victory was in the three states that gave him an Electoral College victory. About 80,000 votes of 137 million cast is, for instance, now far smaller than the number of Americans who have officially died from Covid-19. And because that margin was so vanishingly tiny, almost anything could have swung the election — from the only foreign attack on our elections ever welcomed by a presidential campaign or the letter on Clinton’s email that FBI Director James Comey released days before the election.
You could argue that Never Trumpers could have swung the election and prevented this Trumpocaplyse, but Obama voters who stayed home or voted third party — voters who are disproportionately young or black — are the largest group the party missed out on in 2016. Biden will owe them the presidency, should he win.
Choked by our own olive branches
It’s easy to forget that the few Never Trumpers left would love it if NeverTrumpers-turned-Always-Trumpers Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz were president. Conway was a key Brett Kavanaugh defender. And many of these guys worked for and still revere both George W. Bush and the war in Iraq, the greatest foreign policy disaster of the century.
Democrats have long indulged Thomas Jefferson’s urge to view our two parties as “brethren of the same principle.” And we’ve been choked with our own olive branches.
Look what happened when President Barack Obama nominated Comey, a Republican and former Bush appointee, as FBI director: Comey investigated the 2016 Democratic nominee based on opposition research and smeared her days before the election. Yes, these actions actually smack of what Trump has called “the biggest political crime in American history.” And they happened to Clinton, not Trump, thanks to a Republican who now opposes Trump.
Of course, the real reward of a humiliating defeat of Cheeto Jesus is the chance to get your party back as Trump and his family lose Attorney General William Barr’s Justice-Departmentsize “Get Out of Jail Free” card. Then you’ll be able to blame the Democrats for all the carnage Trump leaves behind. This is the normality you crave.
Democrats, however, have an obligation to make sure we fix things faster than Republicans can come up with a president even worse than Trump.