NeverTrump Agonistes

Why do they think a vote for Biden is good for Republicans?

Graphic from Time Magazine

What do the NeverTrumpers really want?

Do they have a specific collection of policies or are they simply liberal Republicans who hate Trump for exposing their cozy relationship with Democrats, one where they achieve success and status by creating a façade of conservativism and then agreeing with Democrat policies when nobody is watching?

I googled “What do NeverTrumpers want?” and that search returned a plethora of articles, mostly from left wing publications. Most of them related the same things this July 2020 Time article does. Here’s the opening graph:

“Jack Spielman has been a Republican his whole life. But over the past four years, he has come to two realizations.

Increasingly upset by President Donald Trump’s “appalling” behavior, his cozy relationships with dictators and the ballooning national debt, Spielman says his first epiphany was that he couldn’t cast a ballot for Trump again. But for the retired Army cybersecurity engineer, the final straw was the President’s retaliation against impeachment witness Lieut. Colonel Alexander Vindman, who retired in July after Trump fired him from the National Security Council in February. Spielman decided he had to do more than just vote for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden; he had to persuade others to do the same. So Spielman filmed a video for a group called Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT), explaining his views. “I want to do some part,” Spielman tells TIME, ‘to try to correct the wrong that I did in voting for this man.’”

These are the common reasons the NeverTrumper’s exist:

1. Don’t like Trump’s “appalling behavior.”

2. Pals around with dictators

3. Ballooned national debt.

4. Trump removed Alexander Vindman from his NSC post.

Let’s take these one by one.

Trump’s Behavior

When the presidency has featured racists like Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson, antisemites and xenophobes like FDR, serial philanderers like Jack Kennedy and Bill Clinton, and anti-Americans like Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Trump’s sometimes abrasive and caustic behavior seems a small price to pay. His life of trading in wives for upgrades never occurred in the White House the way Kennedy’s trysts with socialites and starlets did, nor was he the beneficiary of oral sex in the Oval Office the way Clinton was.

This seems an illegitimate concern from a group of people who told us during the Clinton Administration that we should be concerned about policies, not the President’s personal life.

Chummy With Dictators

Really? Where is the evidence? It’s not like he was getting paid from China and Ukraine like the Biden family was (and probably still is). I think the evidence is that while Trump was president, the big three dictators - Pooh Xi, Fat Boy Kim, and Vlad the Impaler - confined themselves to their sandbox.

Ballooned the Debt

I’m not comfortable with that one either but while I still oppose the debt Biden continues to rack up the same way I did under Trump, the NeverTrumpers are not bothered with it. I must conclude, like most of the NeverTrump issues, it’s OK when Democrats and the GOPE does it, so that makes this issue moot from the NeverTrump cabal.

Vindman Agonistes

Insubordinate and untrusted by his direct superiors, Alexy was conducting his own flavor of foreign policy in anticipation of his eventual ascension to the Ukrainian Minister of Defense position. He broke the chain of command to give hearsay testimony to the Adam Schiff secret hearings on the first impeachment investigation over a phone call the Democrats built an entire false context around (sort of like Fani Willis). He’s lucky he was allowed to retire instead of being court martialed.

I thought this sentence explained it all:

“Spielman decided he had to do more than just vote for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden; he had to persuade others to do the same.”

That’s like saying, “Man, I sure hate that Hindenburg guy because he hurt my feelings, so I guess I’ll just vote for Hitler.”

Voting against Trump is voting for Biden – and that means all of Biden including Obama’s fourth term, more war, more Iran/Hamas support, more debt, more economic demise, more taxes, and less freedom.

It certainly appears this is what NeverTrumpers want.