The “Never Trump” movement has gone to ground, digging in for a long political winter while the man they vehemently opposed takes control of what was once their Republican Party.
Even as Mitt Romney ponders a job in Donald Trump’s administration and the Bush family made congratulatory calls to the president-elect, their staffers and other leaders of the failed movement have gone silent or made themselves scarce.
“Sorry. On vacation this week,” was the response from Katie Packer, the Romney 2012 campaign manager who founded the anti-Trump Our Priorities PAC early in the primary race, when asked via email Monday about #NeverTrump.
Other leaders of the effort, such as Never Trump PAC senior adviser Rory Cooper, didn’t return calls or emails.
Mr. Trump’s stunning victory — consolidating the GOP base and winning over working-class voters to break through the “blue wall” to capture Rust Belt states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — also has put Never Trump adherents at odds with their party’s voters.
“Clearly, you are in a fairly lonely place within your party politics right now,” said Christopher Borick, director of Pennsylvania’s Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion. “Many of those Never Trump individuals from the more traditional conservative establishment have to wonder about how they manage the reality that the folks who voted Republican in 2016 might not be the group that they feel most aligned with.”
He said those who can’t make amends with Mr. Trump, as Mr. Romney apparently has done, would remain in “purgatory,” waiting for the political winds to change.
“If you still believe in the long term that Trump is a threat to your conservative ideology and the party as a whole and the nation, you might spend some time in the wilderness and wait for your moment,” said Mr. Borick, “if Trump fails to live up to his promises or does live up to his promises, in some cases, that you disagree with.”
Jim McLaughlin, a Republican strategist and pollster who worked for a pro-Trump super PAC, said #NeverTrump deserves exile.
“They lost, and who cares? They are irrelevant at this point,” he said. “Trump won. It’s time to move forward. It’s time to win.”
Mr. Trump reached out to some of his prominent detractors within the Republican Party, including naming South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley as his pick for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
During the campaign, Ms. Haley implicitly criticized Mr. Trump’s rough anti-illegal immigration rhetoric when delivering the GOP response to President Obama’s State of the Union Address. She warned against the “the siren call of the angriest voices.”
Ms. Haley also questioned Mr. Trump’s character, but she eventually said she would vote for him over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“Our country faces enormous challenges here at home and internationally, and I am honored that the President-elect has asked me to join his team and serve the country we love as the next Ambassador to the United Nations,” Ms. Haley said in a statement.
Republican strategist Doug Heye, who was a loud voice for the party establishment’s opposition to Mr. Trump, said he too is ready to support the Trump administration.
“He’s the president, and I want the president to be successful,” he said. “I think in the past — and this was true eight years ago, and it was true 16 years ago — too often it’s easy to be more of the opposition rather than the loyal opposition. And I think that’s a mistake.”
Mr. Heye said the country needs to come together, especially after a presidential campaign that sharply divided Americans.
Pressed about how he could support someone whom he condemned for “perverting conservatism” and had no answer but only “angry populism, cheap sloganeering and bombast,” Mr. Heye simply stated that Mr. Trump had won.
“Look, we had an election. I didn’t support Hillary Clinton either, but if she won, I would want her to be successful, which doesn’t mean I’d agree with everything she’d do,” he said.
However, Mr. Heye balked at characterizing the party’s anti-Trump faction as a “movement.”
“There was no ‘Never Trump movement.’ That phrase was used a lot, but there were different groups that were raising their own money and doing their own thing. There was no movement,” he said.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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