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.
Being the de facto leader of the Republican Party and the de facto leader of "conservatism" (whatever that is defined as) are not the same thing. The fact that you and so many people behave as if they are is the source of a lot of your party's current problems.
There aren't enough people in this country who are ideological conservatives to win an election based solely on that. If you ran a candidate whose entire platform was nothing more than tax cuts for the wealthy, cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits, defunding Planned Parenthood and taking health insurance away from millions of people, the networks would be able to call the election for the Democrats as soon as the polls closed.
That may be hard for you to accept, but your options are to either
compromise on some of your ideals or continue to have White Identity Politics cannibalize the party.
