Since the MAGA monster they created chewed them up and spit them out, Never Trumpers have consistently demanded that the price of their electoral favors was that the Democratic Party needed to become the pre-Trump GOP. That the interests of this tiny handful of dispossessed Conservative political aristocrats must take precedent over the policies and values of, y'know, actual Democrats like you and me.

Remember that unlike, the Democrats, these savvy Never Trumper political thinkers and operators, spent decades helping to turn their party into a nihilistic sh*thole of reprogrammable meatheads in order to win elections.

A nihilistic sh*thole of reprogrammable meatheads which conferred enormous prestige on our Never Trumper friends as its respectable public face. They were the arrogant aristocracy of the GOP, accustomed to barking orders and having them taken seriously. And even though they got run out of their own party, bag and baggage -- even though their political philosophy and all of its policies turned out to be trash and the dirty hippie Left turned out to have been right about the Right all along -- Never Trumpers still cling to the same imperious asshole attitude they had back in their glory days. Still expect to be taken seriously when they snap their fingers and issue decrees.

For example, here we find Mona Charen using her Bulwark podcast to stamp her foot and insist that...well...judge for yourself:

So far, so good.

Ruh roh.

OK, how about this pitch? While you imaginary moderates were doing whatever fictional characters do, and you craven, clueless swing voters were lying to yourselves, the Republican party has been devolving into a nihilistic sh*thole of reprogrammable meatheads -- a nihilistic sh*thole of reprogrammable meatheads which you Republicans who grudgingly voted for Biden but still voted straight fascist party down-ticket actively enabled.

That mob of insurrectionists who tried to overthrow our democracy on January 6th? You built that.

The elected Republicans who are doing everything in their power to sabotage the investigation into the January 6th insurrection and kneecap the Biden administration? You built that too.

And if you spent the rest of your lives going door-to-door apologizing to all the communities your actions have harmed, for your role in unleashing this madness on our country, it would still not be enough to make up for your complicity.

However, what you can do, is can make a down payment on forgiveness by going door-to-door as a moderate or a swing voter or a Republican and begging your neighbors to never, ever vote for the American fascist party again.

Were you thinking of something along those lines, Mona?

Color me shocked. You're going with hippie punching instead. Which, like a gargantuan tax cut, always solves everything, right?

OK, first, when exactly has the Democratic party gotten within a fcking parsec of giving the base everything they want? I look around me and I don't see Medicare for All anywhere. I don't see gun bans or court reform or antitrust teams busting up toxic corporations or taxes getting anywhere close to fair. Instead, I see Republican fascism on the march. I see voting rights being rolled back everywhere Republicans hold power. I see women's basic rights to health care being rolled back everywhere Republicans hold power. I see Republican governors doing everything they can to make the pandemic worse...so they can campaign against Biden for not saving more lives.

And second, I don't know if you've noticed it Mona, but your recently-former party -- the Republican party you are threatening us with returning to power unless your demands are met -- has succeeded wildly by doing nothing but pandering to the worst elements of its base. Hell, the leadership of the party is so lashed to the base's every passing whim that if the MAGA mob demanded that party leaders sacrifice their firstborn, they'd be on Fox News tomorrow offering their younglings up on a spit, with a side of applesauce.

Charen continues:

What do I think?

I think what I have always thought about most Never Trumpers. From "The Aristocrats":

[That] once it all blew up in their faces -- once it became obvious (yet again) that they never had the slightest idea what was really going on in their own country and that the Left had been right about the Right all along and -- the Never Trumpers reacted exactly you would expect entitled royalty to react.

Exactly like exiled Russian aristocracy after the revolution.

Aristocrats who had been run out of their out of their country by the serfs they had exploited.

Aristocrats who suddenly found themselves financially dependent on the largess of people they detested.

Aristocrats who, with that special, asshole-arrogance that comes with an inbred sense of entitlement, become indignant when their hosts don't snap to and do as they're told.

Aristocrats who still believe in their God-given right to command a national spotlight and who go right on airily insisting they know what the serfs really want...

If these Never Trumpers actually believed their own Conservative bunkum -- actually believed that saving their own party was possible and worth doing -- they would shut the fuck up and immediately decamp to wilds of Massachusetts and offer their services to Bill Weld, the only Republican who has the guts to take on Donald Trump here-and-now in the Republican primaries.

But Never Trumpers are too lazy for that kind of heavy lifting against overwhelming odds. Smacks too much of real work. And they're smart enough to see Donald Trump for what he is. As we on the Left have seen him all along. As the agonal breath of a dead political party.

So instead Never Trumpers will go right on doing what they have been doing since the days when they were just plain, old Republicans -- relaxing in a hammock strung between gigs at MSNBC and The New York Times and lazing the summer away handing out scathing Yelp! reviews to Democrats for not cleaning up yet another Republican catastrophe to their specifications.

That's what I think.

Republished with permission from Driftglass.