NeverTrump was just another word for neoconservative. Or, as they were originally and more accurately labeled, Trotskyite World Revolutionary. But conservatism is even deader than neoconservatism, because there is nothing left to conserve.
With the installation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, and a yet-to-be-named reliable replacement for the unreliable Anthony Kennedy, Donald Trump will have confirmed himself as the most consequential conservative president of the modern era (or a close second to Reagan if you’re nostalgic). This will be complete vindication for Trump supporters, which means it’s really the end for the so-called Never Trump conservatives. Of course, there have been so many humiliating defeats for that crowd that we are spoiled for choice. What was your favorite blunder, or blown prediction, which marked their ignominious end?
For some, it must have been in March when Bill Kristol, longtime editor of the conservative magazine the Weekly Standard, showed up in New Hampshire telling people he would run against President Trump in 2020. Or in April when the conservative website RedState was taken over and purged of writers who were “insufficiently supportive” of the president. Some go back to October 2017 when a Twitter spat broke out between Stephen Hayes and Brit Hume of Fox News over the Weekly Standard’s anti-Trump editorials. With the death last week of Charles Krauthammer, the revered neocon commentator and prominent Trump skeptic, the eclipse of the neocon intellectuals is complete.
One thing’s for sure: it wasn’t really a war so much as a rout. The Never Trump intellectual crowd has no momentum and no popular following these days. Consider the trajectory of their would-be leader Kristol, who appears to be indulging in a personal fantasy by putting himself forward as a candidate, as his rapport with GOP voters includes trying to run Evan McMullin in Utah to throw the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton. When that stunt failed, Kristol personally insulted the pro-Trump writer Michael Anton for his influential essay “The Flight 93 election.” Then Kristol’s commentator gig with Fox was not renewed, and he was soon accusing Tucker Carlson of “ethno-nationalism” and “racism.” Overshadowing all of these breaks was Kristol’s personal history of being the conservative’s answer to Bob Shrum, a political “pro” who was always very wrong about politics.
Of course, Kristol was not alone in his contempt for Trump — he was only the most vocal and unhinged. Alongside him were other conservatives like Jennifer Rubin and George Will and Michael Gerson at the Washington Post; Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal; David Brooks and Ross Douthat at the New York Times; Jonah Goldberg and David French at National Review; Ramesh Ponnuru at Bloomberg; and Erick Erickson at RedState. A number of others, people like David Frum and Ana Navarro, committed political seppuku early and endorsed Hillary Clinton. Needless to say, the careers of most of these people have been curtailed dramatically.
Notice the studious omission of the Littlest Chickenhawk, who was second only to Bill Kristol in his furious denouncing of the God-Emperor during the campaign. After all, did Donald Trump not condone the RAPE and MURDER of whatever her name was by his own campaign manager? What this tells us is that the authors of the media narrative still believe that Benny Shapiro is salvageable; notice that no one else from the Intellectual Dark Web is on the list of NeverTrump conservatives, probably because none of them can even be considered as “conservative” as Jennifer Rubin, the controlled opposition figure who was a Democrat and Hollywood lawyer before she suddenly appeared as an Important Opinion Leader in the so-called conservative media.
Where is Thomas Sowell? Dana Loesch, Michael Medved, and Cal Thomas? They are all anti-Trump conservatives who were featured in National Review’s deeply heretical Conservatives Against Trump issue. They should all be purged from the Right and cast out into the outer darkness, where the glory of the God-Emperor is but a distant glimmer.
Below is the list of the intellectually unfit, whose names are anathema to anyone genuinely of the Right. We can no longer be accurately described as the Alt-Right or the Alternative Right, because we are not the alternative and there is no longer any legitimate right-wing alternative to us. There are merely various flavors of anti-nationalist left-wing globalism, regardless of whether they happen to call themselves “conservatives” or “liberals” or “communists”.
- GLENN BECK
- DAVID BOAZ
- L. BRENT BOZELL III
- MONA CHAREN
- BEN DOMENECH
- ERICK ERICKSON
- STEVEN F. HAYWARD
- MARK HELPRIN
- WILLIAM KRISTOL
- YUVAL LEVIN
- DANA LOESCH
- ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
- DAVID MCINTOSH
- MICHAEL MEDVED
- EDWIN MEESE III
- RUSSELL MOORE
- MICHAEL B. MUKASEY
- KATIE PAVLICH
- JOHN PODHORETZ
- R. R. RENO
- THOMAS SOWELL
- CAL THOMAS
- JONAH GOLDBERG
- BEN SHAPIRO
- GEORGE WILL
- JENNIFER RUBIN
- DAVID BROOKS
- DAVID FRENCH
- RICH LOWRY
- DAVID FRUM
- ANA NAVARRO
- BRET STEPHENS
- RAMESH PONNURU
- KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON
- RICK WILSON