[August]

Interesting article: This is what Republican self criticism looks like:

A Never Trump movement, I think it is fair to say, had absolutely no influence on the 2016 election. In theory, elites may have convinced a few key Republican voters in swing states to stay home or to vote for Hillary Clinton; but in reality they were far outnumbered by huge numbers of new Republican voters who saw in Trump hope that they did not in far more experienced and sober men of character.

Like it or not, a Rubio or Cruz nominee likely would have not won these swing voters and thus likely would have lost the election, and with it ensured at least 12 and likely 16 years of a hard progressive government.


Finally, there was something deeply wrong in the Republican Party that at some point required a Trump to excise it. The Republican Party and conservative movement had created a hierarchy that mirror-imaged its liberal antithesis, and suggested to middle class voters between the coasts that the commonalities in income, professional trajectories, and cultural values of elites trumped their own political differences. How a billionaire real estate developer appeared, saw that paradox, and became more empathetic to the plight of middle-class Americans than the array of Republican political pundits is one of the most alarming stories of our age.


Trump was not so much a reflection of red-state Americans’ political ignorance, as their weariness with those of both parties who ridicule, ignore, or patronize them—and now seek to overturn the verdict of the election.

http://amgreatness.com/2017/05/17/ni...s-never-trump/