Donald Trump's rise to political prominence in the 2016 presidential election cycle created an offshoot of the GOP known as the Never Trump Republicans. It's comprised of the people who use to be called RINOs, the acronym for Republicans in Name Only. I never liked that disparaging nickname because I think the rhino is a magnificent animal and shouldn't have its name tainted by association with invertebrate Republicans.
As many others do, I still use "squish" when referring to the Romney wing of the GOP. It's not as catchy, but it gets the job done.
I happen to think that Trump did a great service to the Republican Party by making the unreliable squish element out itself. For far too long, the GOP has been dragged down by members of its own party in Congress who couldn't be counted on for the big votes. Yes, they'd be good for voting with their colleagues most of the time but would too easily side with the Democrats when Republican voters needed them the most.
These politicians don't exist in a vacuum, of course. They are enabled by a portion of the GOP electorate that, for reasons that baffle me, are still Democrat-adjacent rather than conservative. These are the people whom Trump sent fleeing for the welcoming but deceitful arms of a media establishment that will always be dedicated to destroying them. Even the most vaunted intellectuals in the ranks of Never Trump don't grasp that they're pathetic pawns.
As long as Trump is around, however, they serve a purpose for the Democratic flying monkeys in the mainstream media and mistakenly continue believing that they have some sort of relevance in the national political conversation.
Some of the most eager Never Trump media lapdogs got together last weekend for an anti-CPAC hissy fit that they laughingly call the "Principes First" summit.
And there is an audience: Haley has a vocal cheering section in the GOP’s Never Trump faction, which includes a swath of highly credentialed former officeholders who say they no longer recognize their party.
These were the people who gathered in Washington over the weekend for the Principles First summit, a conference of anti-Trump conservatives that styled itself as counterprogramming to the Conservative Political Action Conference where Trump rallied his faithful on Saturday.
Sessions at the Principles First gathering featured an array of luminaries from yesterday’s GOP: former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former federal judge J. Michael Luttig, former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, as well as former presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson. The former Trump White House staffers Alyssa Farah Griffin, Cassidy Hutchinson and Sarah Matthews appeared on a panel together, where they agreed that another Trump term would be, in Cassidy Hutchinson’s words, “the greatest step toward fascism that we have taken in this country.”
It should be noted that these people stopped recognizing their party in 2016 because Donald Trump won an election that his GOP primary opponents almost certainly would have lost to Hillary Clinton. After eight years of His High Holiness the Lightbringer Barack Obama, the squishy middle of the Republican party was OK with losing to one of the most loathsome people in the history of American politics because of "principles" and stuff.
It's not surprising that Cassidy Hutchinson can quote Dem talking points with casual ease. She was plucked from obscurity by the House J6 Soviet Select Committee on Daddy Issues to be one of its prized lapdogs.
Alyssa Farah Griffin has carved out a niche by never challenging her shrieking harridan colleagues on "The View" with anything that might indicate that she was ever a Republican.
And then there's little Adam Kinzinger, the guy who decided to stomp his feet about Trump on his way out of Washington after his district was redrawn.
You couldn't find any principles among these people with an MRI machine.
I'm going to write this a lot in the next several months: anyone claiming to be vehemently anti-Trump because of principles is willfully aiding and abetting the rapid leftist destruction of the United States of America. If these people do have principles, they're commie principles. You can't throw in with the progressive pigs in Washington and run around saying that you don't have any mud on you.
There's a lot more in that sty than just mud that's covering these people, and it stinks to high Heaven.
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