In the halcyon days of the 2016 election, when Donald Trump had not yet reconstituted the Republican Party around his supertanned image, a group of Trump-wary conservatives made good on their “Never Trump” promise by doing one of three things: voting third party, voting a write-in candidate, or sitting out the election. In the end they did not, against incessant appeals from fellow conservatives, “hold their nose” and vote Trump.
They did not do so because despite these warnings—the most infamous being Michael Anton’s “Flight 93 Election” argument—they judged Donald Trump to be comprehensively unfit for office. The Never Trumpers did agree with half the argument: the half that said Hillary Clinton would be disastrous for the country. But many of them thought Trump would be just as ruinous.
Fast forward to today and many of the same Never Trump conservatives are adamant that Trump’s critics must vote for Joe Biden in November. Nothing short of that—from voting third party, to voting a write-in candidate, to sitting out the election—will do.
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