Should-Read: My view is that it is more likely than not that the Never Trumpers have burned their careers as professional Republicans, as recipients of largesse from right-wing plutocrats, and that the Republican public intellectual future will belong to those who stayed quiet—neither conspicuously pro- nor anti-Trump. Which means, of course, that they will be of very low quality. The mainstream Republicans will say that the Never Trumpers overreacted: he is more public than second-term Reagan was, and much less disciplined, but it is not clear that he is any less of a chief executive than second-term Reagan was: Sam Tanenahus: On the Front Lines of the GOP's Civil War: "'Conservatives...' says Jennifer Rubin 'are not Americans first. They’re Trump defenders first'... ideological groupthink...
...It gives credence to the old argument... that a great many conservative writers and policy experts are intellectuals manqué... leashed by wealthy donors... like the Republican politicians they promote.... In truth, “Conservatism, Inc.” was... a Soviet-style nomenklatura, with a good deal of ideological policing. “I had the president of a small conservative think tank tell me he admires my anti-Trump position but he just can’t be identified that way because his donors would cut him off,” says Boot. Even now, the Never Trumpers I talked to... were constantly going off the record or pleading, “Protect me.”... The good news is that the Never Trumpers are getting a close hearing. Whatever mistakes they made in their time of devotion, they have emerged as the best exegetes of the conservative god that failed. No one else understands it so well—its means, its ends, its methods, its costs. “The problem with the devil’s bargain is that the devil never delivers,” Frum says. “That’s the point of the story”...
