The Three Types of Anti-Trump Republicans

While more than two years have passed since the 2016 Presidential Election, some self-professed Republicans and conservatives still have not come around to President Trump.  During my most recent appearance on the “Conservative Underground” podcast, I attempted to categorize Trump opponents into two distinct groups: those who support conservative principles but oppose and/or criticize President Trump because of his style and personality and those who have had more in common with liberals all along.  Upon closer examination, I have realized that the Trump opponents actually fall into more than two categories, some of which may overlap at times.

Category 1: The Style Over Substance Crowd

President Trump’s “style” appears to cause heartburn to some on the right, even if they generally agree with the substance of his administration; including the tax cuts, conservative judges, and the more conservative stance on immigration.  However, many of these folks feel the need to suck up to the media by obsessing over President Trump’s character flaws.

During his short time in the Senate, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse has a near perfect “Liberty Score,” securing him a place in the “top 25” on the Conservative Review website.  Sasse even introduced a bill requiring health care providers to care for infants who survive botched abortions.  In spite of his strong conservative background, Sasse criticized President Trump heavily during the months leading up to 2016 Presidential Election and continues to criticize the “chaos” and “reality TV circus” of the Trump administration.

Former Ohio Governor John Kasich generally falls into the conservative category; with the possible exception of immigration, where he seems to have more in common with liberals than conservatives. Kasich, one of many Republicans who sought the party’s presidential nomination in 2016, refused to endorse President Trump or even appear at the Republican National Convention in his own state.  His criticism of President Trump has continued throughout the first two years of his presidency; he effectively blamed the Commander-in-Chief for the mailing of pipe bombs to prominent Democrats last year. 

Former Arizona Senator Jeff Flake wrote a whole book denouncing President Trump called Conscience of a Conservative.  His choice to use that title enraged L. Brent Bozell III, son of L. Brent Bozell Jr, who ghostwrote Barry Goldwater’s book of the same name.  Flake gave a speech on the Senate floor, where he attributed “the present coarseness of our national dialogue” to President Trump, and whined about his “reckless, outrageous, and undignified behavior.” Besides immigration, Flake comes across as a conservative on most issues; he has even authored books on government waste after the man who normally did that job, Tom Coburn, left office.

Unlike most other dynamic Trump critics, who have warmed to the President over time, George Conway actually started out as a Trump supporter; at least according to his wife, Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway.  Mrs. Conway has said that her husband proudly wore his MAGA hat on Election Night 2016.  Conway even considered taking a post in the Trump administration.  However, based solely on looking at his Twitter feed, one could easily mistake “Mr. Kellyanne Conway” for a member of #TheResistance.  Just this past weekend, Conway wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post calling the President a “cancer on the presidency” and has previously called his wife’s boss’s mental health into question.

2012 Presidential candidate Mitt Romney also falls into the style over substance crowd. While Romney had a hard time convincing many people that he genuinely embraced the conservative movement, he had come a long way from his pro-abortion position that he ran in his unsuccessful bid to take on Ted Kennedy in 1994.  He told George Stephanopolous during a Republican debate in 2012, “In my view, Roe v. Wade was improperly decided.” Arguably, Romney had the most conservative position on immigration  of any of the Republican candidates in the 2012 Republican field.

In 2016, Romney denounced President Trump in a speech ahead of the Republican Primary in Utah and ended up telling people in Utah in Arizona to vote for Ted Cruz in the Republican primary because “a vote for Kasich is a vote for Trump.” Following the 2016 Presidential Election, the two buried the hatchet; at least they appeared to. President Trump even considered Romney for the position of Secretary of State.  Soon enough, Romney ended up declaring his Senate candidacy for his adopted home state of Utah.  President Trump endorsed him and supported his candidacy.  Just a day before taking office, Romney wrote a blistering op-ed for The Washington Post, complaining that President Trump “has not risen to the mantle of the office,” and whining about how the President has a “shortfall” when it comes to “presidential leadership in qualities of character.” 

Category 2: The Old Guard

For years, a foreign policy consensus has governed the way politicians handle international affairs.  Politicians in both parties have supported an interventionist foreign policy that calls on the United States to export democracy; even if they have campaigned against it. This approach often leads to the United States toppling dictators with no plan on what to do next. In addition, many people in the “old guard” worship supranational organizations such as NATO and therefore suffer massive heartburn when President Trump dares to suggest that other countries in NATO “pay their fair share.” 

Bill Kristol has become one of the most bitter anti-Trump fanatics.  Rather than simply abstain from voting in the 2016 Presidential Election, Kristol worked hard to derail the Trump candidacy by supporting a third party candidate.  After failing to convince David French of National Review to run, he ended up finding his man in Evan McMuffin.  McMuffin had little chance of achieving the necessary 270 electoral votes needed to capture the presidency.  The strategy behind the McMuffin campaign relied on depriving President Trump of reaching the magic number; specifically by denying him the six electoral votes that Republicans always take for granted in Utah.  For a while, it looked like the McMuffin campaign’s bid to deny President Trump Utah’s electoral votes would succeed.  However, the President ended up winning Utah with a plurality of the vote.  McMuffin only ended up on the ballot in a handful of states; including the swing states of Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota and Virginia. McMuffin received close to one million votes nationwide.

While Kristol may sound like a liberal because of his never-ending Trump criticism, he has given conservatives good advice before; specifically when it comes to the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republicans’ Vice Presidential candidate in 2008. Kristol had also successfully worked to defeat the Clinton administration’s attempt to socialize healthcare and written an introduction to a book called Homosexuality and American Public Life, which does not endorse the PC philosophy regarding homosexuality; to say the least.  Kristol appeared all too happy to sacrifice a seat on the Supreme Court so that he could virtue-signal about the superiority of his foreign policy positions.

Jonah Goldberg of National Review has also emerged as a leading critic of President Trump; although he did not seem to like Mitt Romney either, forcefully advocating against the idea of a third Romney presidential bid.  Goldberg apparently fails to realize that only President Trump stands between America and “liberal fascism,” which Goldberg wrote an entire book advocating against.

The old guard also includes the well-respected Bush family.  Prior to the election of President Trump, no Republican presidential ticket without a member of the family had won since 1972.  Unlike many on the debate stage, President Trump harshly criticized the Iraq War and continues to lament the fact that America has spent trillions of dollars in the Middle East. The nasty feud that emerged between the President and Jeb Bush only worsened the relationship between the Trumps and the Bushes. Of all the Bushes, George P. Bush, son of Jeb, had the most reasonable position on President Trump.  Three months before Election Day, as the media’s favorite Republicans trashed their nominee for his comments on Khizr Khan, Bush reminded them to keep their eyes on the prize: “From Team Bush, it’s a bitter pill to swallow, but you know what? You get back up and you help the man that won, and you make sure that we stop Hillary Clinton.” Unfortunately, many of the people in his family decided not to take his advice, with his uncle George W. voting for neither candidate and his grandfather, the late former President George H.W. Bush, voting for Hillary Clinton. 

A recently published biography alleges that the late former First Lady Barbara Bush blamed President Trump for her “heart attack.”  Once again, many of these arguments mirror the criticisms of those in the “style over substance” crowd. Mrs. Bush ended up writing in Jeb’s name on the ballot rather than vote for the wife of the man who defeated her husband’s bid for the presidency a quarter century earlier. 

Category 3: The Closeted Liberals…Out of the Closet

I touched upon this in my July 9 blog post entitled “The New Realignment in American Politics.” Many of the people on the list have always had more in common with liberals than conservatives; the rise of President Trump merely accelerated their realization.  It might make sense to call some of these people libertarians although many of them subscribe to the interventionist foreign policy, which libertarians reject, and a lot of them signed off on an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide; an idea which a true libertarian would argue the states should decide.  In my last article, I identified these #NeverTrumpers as Christine Todd Whitman, Richard Hanna, Meg Whitman, Steve Schmidt, David Frum, and Nicolle Wallace.  Add to that list William Weld, President Trump’s Republican primary opponent in the 2020 Presidential Election. 

My initial list also included Kathleen Parker and Ana Navarro.  Navarro has become a more outspoken critic of the Trump administration, although her hostility towards conservatism predates the 2016 Presidential Election.  She once dismissed stay-at-home moms as “kept women” and compared opponents to same-sex marriage to “GEICO cavemen.”  I will now add to that list another “conservative” who frequently makes the rounds on cable news: Jennifer Rubin. Rubin, who the Washington Post foolishly labels a “conservative” blogger, called for L.L. Bean to move out of Maine if Senator Susan Collins voted in favor of President Trump’s Supreme Court pick.  Some of Rubin’s other greatest hits include accusing Fox News of “endangering people of color” and “destroying political thought,” urging Congress to hold hearings on “domestic, right-wing terrorism,” calling for the public harassment of White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders as a “life sentence,” and slamming Stephanie Hamill, an actual conservative, as an “inhumane beast” and asking her “are you raised by wolves?” Hey, Jeff Flake, you might want to lecture Jennifer Rubin about the “coarseness of our national dialogue.”   

Arguably, a fourth category also exists, consisting of Republicans who once held powerful positions in the Republican Party who appear to have sacrificed their conservative credentials in exchange for perches in the mainstream media. I will focus on them in an entirely separate blog, which will come out in the very near future. For the record, this list will include Joe Scarborough, Steve Schmidt, and Michael Steele. Stay tuned.