GOP’s Stop-Trump fever breaks

[Mr. Morden]

The #NeverTrump crowd has to ask themselves this: If Trump is the Republican nominee, are they willing to go all the way to vote against him.

That's the definition of #NeverTrump, yes.  As distinct from the people who have been trying to stop Trump from getting the nomination, but have never ruled out voting for him in the general election.

AFAIK, no one prominent who's actually #NeverTrump (that is, who's been saying that they'll vote against Trump in the GE) has yet doubled back on that commitment and said that they're willing to vote for Trump in the GE after all.

[Mr. Morden]

The #NeverTrump crowd has to ask themselves this: If Trump is the Republican nominee, are they willing to go all the way to vote against him.

That's the definition of #NeverTrump, yes.  As distinct from the people who have been trying to stop Trump from getting the nomination, but have never ruled out voting for him in the general election.

AFAIK, no one prominent who's actually #NeverTrump (that is, who's been saying that they'll vote against Trump in the GE) has yet doubled back on that commitment and said that they're willing to vote for Trump in the GE after all.

Rubio issued several "#NeverTrump" tweets during his campaign at one point, and is now saying he'll probably support Trump in the general.

EDIT: Here's one:
https://mobile.twitter.com/marcorubio/status/703583966973075457

He used a #NeverTrump hashtag without actually knowing what it meant.  When he was asked about it very soon afterward, he said that he thought #NeverTrump just meant that he would never vote for him in the primary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3kUlpyBwZc

The actual #NeverTrump people, those who said they'd never vote for Trump in the GE like Romney, Baker, Whitman, Sasse, and a bunch of conservative media personalities like many of those at National Review....I'm unaware of a single one of them going back on their earlier statements and now saying that they'll vote for Trump in the GE.  Some of them probably will, sure, but for now #NeverTrump is intact.

[Mr. Morden]

The #NeverTrump crowd has to ask themselves this: If Trump is the Republican nominee, are they willing to go all the way to vote against him.

That's the definition of #NeverTrump, yes.  As distinct from the people who have been trying to stop Trump from getting the nomination, but have never ruled out voting for him in the general election.

AFAIK, no one prominent who's actually #NeverTrump (that is, who's been saying that they'll vote against Trump in the GE) has yet doubled back on that commitment and said that they're willing to vote for Trump in the GE after all.

Rubio issued several "#NeverTrump" tweets during his campaign at one point, and is now saying he'll probably support Trump in the general.

EDIT: Here's one:
https://mobile.twitter.com/marcorubio/status/703583966973075457

He used a #NeverTrump hashtag without actually knowing what it meant.  When he was asked about it very soon afterward, he said that he thought #NeverTrump just meant that he would never vote for him in the primary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3kUlpyBwZc

The actual #NeverTrump people, those who said they'd never vote for Trump in the GE like Romney, Baker, Whitman, Sasse, and a bunch of conservative media personalities like many of those at National Review....I'm unaware of a single one of them going back on their earlier statements and now saying that they'll vote for Trump in the GE.  Some of them probably will, sure, but for now #NeverTrump is intact.

I bet the "actual" #NeverTrump crowd isn't that big.

The rest are a bunch of phonies.

No we're not.  We are just saying that he would be a terrible and completely unacceptable choice to be the de facto leader of conservatism, but that he would still be miles better than Hillary.

Never definitely implies never. It should have been #NotTrump or something. Of course Hillary is a gift to the Republican party for unity.

Again, #NeverTrump as used by most people using the hashtag really means never.  There are some interlopers like Rubio, who used the hashtag when they didn't understand what it meant.  But the original intention of the hashtag was "I'm not voting for Trump even in the general election".

[Mr. Morden]

I bet the "actual" #NeverTrump crowd isn't that big.

You mean among party elites or among “regular voters”?  There’s a decent-sized list of party elites who’ve said they’re not going to vote for Trump in the GE, which we’re tracking in this thread:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=230807.0

Of course, they’re vastly outnumbered by those who’ve said they will vote for him, sure.  Though I do think that #NeverTrump will grow before it shrinks, as many congressional Republicans have declined to answer whether they’d vote for Trump in the GE or not, I’m assuming that while most of them will do so, at least *some* won’t.  Whether they later flip-flop and decide to back him anyway, I don’t know.

Among regular voters…I still think it’s hard to say.  For a major party nominee, Trump is unusually divisive within his own party.  Not just among elites, but among ordinary voters.  People talk about the PUMAs, but that was different.  Obama never had unfavorable numbers among Clinton supporters nearly as bad as Trump does now among Cruz and Kasich supporters.

I think many are currently underestimating how much the media is going to use the post-Trump wrapping up the nomination months to talk about all the divisions within the party.  We’ll have to see how much air time folks like Romney, Baker, Sasse, etc. get, and to what extent they’re interested in speaking up.  We’ll have to see how much elite resistance to voting for Trump in the GE trickles down to regular voters.  And we’ll have to see if any 3rd party materializes, or if there’s at least some kind of “Write in X” movement.  I think it’s too early to say.

Incidentally, Megan McArdle posted an interesting set of testimonials from #NeverTrump Republicans (ordinary voters, not party elites) a couple of months ago:

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-02-29/the-die-hard-republicans-who-say-nevertrump