In 2016 I was firmly in the anti-Trump camp as we rolled into election night. I was perplexed that this was the man we were choosing to represent the Right. “Perplexed” is the right word to use. I wasn’t angry, I just didn’t understand the man or his attraction for conservatives.

However, I kept an open mind. I asked my pro-Trump friends to explain his appeal, I stayed curious, I watched and waited. It never occurred to me to blame anyone or be angry at anyone. The Republican voter base spoke and Trump was their pick. My ideas lost in those primaries and it was up to me to figure out why.

I eventually came to enjoy the Trump presidency. I’m still enjoying it, although definitely not as much today.

The thing that has always bothered me this last four years hasn’t been the frothing rage and hatred for conservative Americans coming from the left, it’s been the baffling reasoning of the Never Trump “right”.

I never could figure out how any of them could justify a vote for Hillary Clinton or any progressive Democrat. I completely understand sitting out on voting for Trump, or casting a protest vote for (blech) Evan McMuffin McMullin, but I could never understand voting for abortion, higher taxes, and socialist policies just to defeat the Republican candidate.

I still don’t. I’ve watched certain industry colleagues gleefully cast a vote for Biden, posting the ubiquitous ‘I voted’ stickers while explaining their pride in voting for a “good man.”

It is really hard to wrap my brain around. The cast of The Lincoln Project claim to be the smartest men in the room but their logic doesn’t add up in the slightest. They hate Trump because he’s a scourge to the conservative brand and to conservative values. They hate that people voted for Trump because he’s a scourge to the conservative brand and to conservative values. So to remedy those unfaithful conservatives who sold out to the “cult of Trump” they vote for a candidate who supports abortion up until birth, an end to independent contracting jobs, socialism and higher taxes, more government control, gun bans, and ending school choice for millions of students across the country.

Tell me how that vote translates into “principled conservatism” while people who voted for the Republican candidate are the “fake conservatives”?

The truth is, The Lincoln Project and every other Never Trump “principled conservative” out there doesn’t really hate the President. They hate you.

They hate the people out there who went with their guts at the end of the day instead of with the call of the consultant class.

They hate you because they thought they knew everything, they thought they were the ones with their fingers on the pulse of the right-wing. They were not prepared for how completely out of touch they were with the actual voters. You voted against their degrees and fancy titles and self-righteousness. You made them wrong and they hate your for it.

Eight years of complaining about how Obama marshaled the elite class to sow disdain and abhorrence for the working class, the “uneducated” voters, and anyone who fell down on the side of their constitutional rights didn’t actually sharpen them, it turned them into what they hated the most.

NeverTrumpLincolnProject is what happens when you make politics your idol. You become a person who is always searching for the right sacrifice to make in order to get the right reward. You begin to despise anyone who won’t follow your lead. Everyone needs to make the “right” sacrifices or none of this works.

Sounds like socialism to me.

Pay no attention to the NeverTrumpLincolnProject camp any longer. Perhaps briefly there was a time when they might have been able to build some middle ground, but the current state of this election and the surrounding firestorm has burned away any good will left for them on both sides. They thought they would be heroes to the left, and instead now that it appears their goal was successful, the left has no further use for them. They’re back to hating them for daring to be Republicans. They were never going to win that love.

Smart leaders know you never wife the stripper.

They thought they would be leaders to the right, once we broke the “spell” of Trump, but they’ve only outed themselves as the snobby elitists they fought against for eight years of the Obama administration.

No, it was never Donald Trump these people hated. It was only ever you they hated, the average American who thinks for themselves and doesn’t have any loyalty to the rotten inside-the-beltway culture that has come to define D.C. They hate you because you don’t need them and you never did and while we were all on the same side of things they could convince themselves of their importance. Now that the facades are burned away and we’re looking the bare bones of all this, it is quite obvious that they were never important or influential at all. They weren’t thought-leaders, they were simply regurgitating.

And that enrages them and that is your fault.

So they hate you.