The “adults” were back in the room. Competence had returned to the White House. Decorum, empathy, and decency abounded. Those were some of the jubilant proclamations made by a certain segment of the right after Joe Biden took office. For them, it was all fun and games with the bad orange man gone — until it wasn’t.

That’s the situation Never Trump figures, especially those that cashed in with MSNBC appearances and subscription newsletters, find themselves facing. The brutal collapse of Afghanistan mixed with Biden’s cold, incompetent response have opened the floodgates on a sea of regret. And while those “Republicans” who made it their mission to put Biden into the Oval Office in 2020 will never truly admit it, things aren’t going as planned.

The struggle is real. pic.twitter.com/Wio6uFw4YW

— Kris Kinder (@kris_kinder) August 19, 2021

You guys have really got to stop letting these people down. If only you met their elitist standards on what voters should be and do, everything would otherwise be fine. Of course, that contempt for “both parties” seems rather irrelevant when only one party is in power.

These reactions are also pathetic in that they attempt to shift blame. Never Trump wanted Biden. They got Biden. They do not get to sit on the sidelines now and pretend to float above it all as if they predicted the disaster that we are now seeing. For four long years, Never Trump insisted that Trump voters owned every single mean tweet and decision the former president made. The rules don’t suddenly change because it’s convenient.

Every single awful decision that Biden has made, from Afghanistan to the border to the economy, is owned by Never Trump. They had the chance during 2020 to stay out of the mix, leave their ballots blank, and hold onto some semblance of the high ground. Instead, they soaked up cable news hits and actively sought to elect the most incapable, morally disastrous president in the nation’s history (yes, morality does extend beyond the bounds of tweeting).

And now they want to act shocked this is all happening?

I thought part of the new plan was to build up some kind of international coalition to attempt to contain the Taliban? What, he’s making goodwill calls to mayors for his infrastructure plan instead? https://t.co/deq4zMT9vv

— Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) August 17, 2021

Who could have possibly foreseen this except almost everyone? I was hardly alone in shouting from the rooftops that Biden was an incompetent phony that had never been right about much of anything over his entire career, especially regarding foreign policy. The idea that personality should be the preeminent quality in a president was always foolhardy. Policies are ultimately what affect the lives of Americans.

Further, the obsession over morality regarding Trump’s decades-old transgressions eschewed the fact that morality regarding policy is far, far more relevant in a presidency. I didn’t like that Trump had moral failings a decade prior to taking office. But I much more don’t like seeing Afghans shot in the streets while Americans are left to fend for themselves. Which is more immoral from a governmental standpoint? That’s an easy question to answer, and that so many Never Trumpers refused to even make that calculus was always disturbing.

When you put it all together, the blame-shifting we are now seeing is laughable. As RedState’s Kira Davis opined in response, just take some responsibility for once.

I find few things more distasteful than privileged "intellectuals" who, rather admit that they were wrong about a lot, transfer that self-loathing to the unwashed masses. https://t.co/OjyyEqDpQ4

— Kira (@RealKiraDavis) August 19, 2021

By the very standard they laid out during the Trump era, Never Trump own what we are seeing now. They helped put this man in office. They did this. Preening and obfuscating from their overpriced beltway residences doesn’t change that. Their regret is palpable, even if their egos won’t let them admit to it.