Chris Christie and the Death of the Never Trump Republican

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“Never Trump” was a label embraced by a handful of Republicans who deemed Donald Trump disqualified for office by some combination of his ignorance, his mendacity, his bigotry, and/or his authoritarianism. Almost no one still affiliated with the party or the conservative movement willingly uses the label any more. The label has largely been repurposed by Trump himself as an epithet against any Republican who dares utter criticism of him, however mild.

In place of Never Trumpism, the Biden-era Republican party offers up figures like Chris Christie. Christie has put himself forward as the face of Republican resistance to Trump. But it is a form of “resistance” so tepid as to become almost indistinguishable from support

Christie grabbed headlines by declaring he might run for president, and — unlike other contenders, who have implicitly or explicitly conditioned their candidacies on Mr. Trump not running — he announced he wouldn’t wait for Trump’s permission. Christie has lambasted Trump for continuing to claim he legitimately won the 2020 election. But he has restricted his criticism to the exceedingly narrow ground that voters are simply tired of hearing about the past

This is the perfect distillation of Establishment Republican thinking on this issue. They don’t want to dispute Trump’s election lies; they just want to drop the question. Trump, of course, has no intention of dropping the argument, which is why he’s winning it: He is making a case that Biden stole the election, and hardly anybody in his party is willing to contradict him.

In an interview last night with Laura Ingraham, who spoke at Trump’s 2020 nominating convention, Christie assured the Fox News audience that he had no disagreement in principle with the party’s leader. He agreed that Democrats cheated in 2020 — “We know what happened in 2020, in instances where the voting laws were changed improperly” — and heartily endorsed state-level voting restrictions as an appropriate, forward-looking response.

Prodded further by Ingraham, he conceded that his disagreements with Trump were limited to matters of style and personality and that he fully supported Trump’s substantive positions.

Trump’s supporters see the party as riven along the same lines: not left versus right, but weak versus strong.

The “weak-sauce conservatism” of Goldberg and Hayes is extremely conservative. What makes it weak is its unwillingness to undermine the voting process through chaos and violence.

Supporting Trump is fundamentally a choice between being willing to abide the rules of the democratic game and doing whatever it takes to gain power. Christie is trying to elide the choice. But in so doing, he is revealing the same weakness of character that Trump used to discredit the Republican alternatives. When the choice comes again between democracy and power, they will choose power.

George H.W. Bush spoke of a “compassionate conservatism.” Sadly, I’ve never seen any kind of compassion coming from either the Democratic or Republican party. As far as I’m concerned, both parties are cut from the same cloth: that of the Roman centurions.

Over and over, the Republicans and former Republicans who gathered just outside Washington this weekend warned that President Donald Trump and his allies in Congress are tearing at the very fabric of American democracy.

A former congressman described the president’s party as an “authoritarian-embracing cult.” A prominent conservative writer said Trumpism is an “existential threat.” And a retired Army general, his voice shaking with emotion, cited post-Nazi Germany as a roadmap for the nation’s post-Trump recovery.

It’s unclear how many people are listening.

The main convention hall at the sixth annual Principles First summit on Saturday and Sunday was half empty. About 750 chairs were set up in a room that could have fit thousands, and many were unfilled. Not a single current Republican elected official participated in the two-day program.

This is what remains of the Grand Old Party’s Never Trump movement, a coalition of Republicans, former Republicans and independents who banded together as Trump consolidated power. They largely remain political exiles — not quite at home among Democrats yet disgusted by how the president has abandoned Republicans’ longstanding commitments to free trade and limited government.

John McDowell, 69, who was a lifelong Republican before Trump’s emergence, acknowledged that the diminished group had virtually “zero” political clout within his former party.

“It’s just a fact. We’re losing good people,” said McDowell, a former Capitol Hill staffer and county Republican official from San Carlos, California. “The party is becoming more and more MAGA-fied.”

Virtually everyone who gathered at the hotel in National Harbor, Maryland, said they are rooting for Democratic victories in this fall’s midterm elections. One of the only Democrats there was Conor Lamb, a former congressman from Pennsylvania who lost his party’s primary to John Fetterman four years ago.

Despite dire concerns, there was a slight sense of optimism among the half-empty convention hall and quiet hotel hallways.

Several people cheered last week’s Supreme Court decision to strike down Trump’s tariffs, the economic tool he has wielded without congressional approval in his attempt to force friends and foes around the globe to bend to his will. Trump insisted he would implement a new round of tariffs despite the ruling.

Ex-MAGA diehard Rich Logis, wearing a red “I left MAGA hat,” hopes to see “an electoral revolt against MAGA” in the midterms.

“I think there’s a shift in our country right now,” he said. “It happens slowly.”

Logis was promoting support groups for friends and family of Trump loyalists at a table outside the convention hall. Nearby, someone was selling books about how to escape cults.

At the podium, former Republican Rep. Joe Walsh implored Trump’s critics not to downplay the seriousness of the threat the president poses to the nation.

“He’s everything our founders feared. Say it. Believe it,” Walsh said. He said his former party is “an authoritarian-embracing cult” and “a threat to everything I love.”

Retired Gen. Mark Hertling, who once commanded the U.S. Army’s European forces, said he’s “haunted” by allies who ask him “whether American institutions ever can be trusted again.”

“Our nation’s institutions have been shaken. Our alliances have been strained. Our credibility has been damaged. And our nation’s values have been cast aside,” Hertling said. He suggested the U.S. should look to the reconstruction of Germany after the defeat of Nazism if it hoped to to restore the damage caused by Trump and his allies.

The nation’s recovery, he said as his voiced cracked, would be something people have to earn over many years.

Bill Kristol, who worked in previous Republican administrations and helped found the Weekly Standard magazine, described Trump and his Republican supporters in Congress as “an existential threat” to the nation. But he was also optimistic about the upcoming midterm elections.

Kristol said Democrats are “almost certain to win the House,” “could possibly win the Senate,” and have “a good chance to win the presidency” in 2028.