This in-depth essay on the Never Trump movement was first published in 2016 on Justin Stapley’s first blog Never Tyranny.
There are fewer things that have been more misunderstood in the discussion of the unusual 2016 election cycle than the Never Trump movement. Even those who claimed to be a part of the movement either don’t fully understand it or used it as a vessel for venting frustrations instead of as an apparatus for unity in the face of the Trump candidacy. An explanation of the movement’s genesis, its continued endurance, and its relevance may help clear the mists of rhetoric.
One of the most significant failures of those who derided the Never Trump movement was their inability to see outside the prism of identity and resentment politics. Because modern politics too often teaches activists to hitch their wagons to individuals and to identify their stances, not with enduring principles, but with transient characters of charisma, it is difficult for many to comprehend a position which stood independent of such concerns. A large number of the arguments that were used in an attempt to bully and coerce Never Trump conservatives to fall in line behind Donald Trump failed to do so, primarily due to this political disconnect.
To understand Never Trump is to understand the difference between identity politics and principled politics and the contrast between being reactionary and being conservative.
Conservatives who considered themselves Never Trump were assaulted consistently with accusations of being sore losers, country-club activists, the resentful “establishment,” and even traitors and Islamists for “enabling” Hillary Clinton a near victory by refusing to vote for Trump. To understand why these attacks did not affect Never Trump conservatives is to realize they are operating on a different plane of political thought.
Despite what many pundits suggested, Never Trump was a loose collection of various fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, constitutionalists, foreign policy hawks, and libertarians. Their beliefs and principles did not exist in a vacuum but existed, often intensely, previous to the 2016 election cycle and continue to this day. Their views are personal ideological determinations that were often reached after intense self-introspection and earnest soul searching. For many of them, their principles are synonymous with the heart and soul of their political activism. To many of them, voting is a sacred responsibility that constitutes an effective self-endorsement of a candidate and his policies. In reality, they were Never Trump before the term was invented because their stances and positions did not match his reactionary rhetoric.
Because Never Trump conservatives viewed politics through the prism of self-determined principles instead of identity politics and because they viewed their opposition in terms of ideological disagreement instead of partisan fealty, they were less concerned with “handing the election to Hillary” as they were with the survival of the principles, policies, and ideas they believe will actually save the country. In their estimation, allowing Donald Trump to carry the banner of Republicanism without clear objection to his demeanor, tactics, and policies is a concession that will have resounding consequences and make it nearly impossible to communicate their positions effectively in the future without being tainted by hypocrisy.
Certain pundits, such as Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, know enough about the complexities of the various wings of the Republican Party that they probably recognized this inconvenient truth. That is why they adopted the tactics of the left, which they have attacked for so long, and sought to marginalize, categorize, and trivialize the Never Trump movement. By willfully ignoring the multiplicities of the Never Trump movement and merely labeling them as the newest manifestation of the hated “establishment,” they sought to trivialize the movement while also adding fuel to the flames of resentment politics which propelled Trump to pre-eminence in the first place.
Despite continued attempts to declare the Never Trump movement dead going back as far as early May, the movement endured (and many still call themselves Never Trump today). The reason for this is simple. Every time Trump spouted his inflammatory rhetoric, every time he declared something that flew in the face of constitutional principles, every time he pushed divisive beliefs, and every time his supporters presented a “with us or against us” ultimatum they only fueled the strength and conviction of the Never Trump conservatives because they witnessed first-hand the type of politics they do not want to be associated with their own beliefs.
One might ask if all of this is true then why do victories for the Never Trump movement seem to be so few and far between? Why did Trump get the nomination in the first place? Why is Republican Leadership far less concerned with the 16 million who voted against Trump than they are with the 14 million who voted for Trump? Why did Trump win the general election?
The answer to this is simple: the Never Trump movement lacked cohesion and faced an inability to coalesce around a single strategy to defeat Trump.
From the beginning, the loose collection of activists that we call Never Trump had been an uneasy alliance of disparate groups who, at best, agreed only on a nucleus of shared ideals. The threat of Trump was down-played for so long and organization against him required such different political affiliations to be created that active resistance fell short. These factors were compounded by the fact that the Never Trump movement gave in to the compulsion to communicate their opposition in terms of the identity and resentment politics which they were organizing to resist. All of these circumstances explain why the Never Trump movement was thwarted, why Trump came out of the primary season and the general election as a victor, and why Party Leadership and Radio pundits have chosen to ignore Never Trump as a disorganized non-threat.
But Never Trump didn’t go away. This is the truth that Trump’s supporters, Trump’s enablers, and Trump himself refuse to see…in many ways, those who called themselves Never Trump are the future of the Conservative Movement. It is the inclusiveness, discourse, and cohesion against improbable odds that can create a political apparatus that will at last gain the ability to wage an effective insurgency against progressivism and socialism. It is a culture of freedom coalesced around a movement of hope that will save our country from ruin, not a culture of hatred and fear circled around the false promises of a single demagogue.