Erick Erickson by Gage Skidmore, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0/Original

Over at The Resurgent, this morning, long-time RedState managing editor Erick Erickson announced that he will support President Trump in the 2020 election:

This week in 2016, I declared I would be “Never Trump.” A friend suggested I use a hashtag that had started circulating on Twitter, i.e #NeverTrump. The piece exploded and pushed me into a whirlwind of coverage. Despite lots of pressure, protestors literally on my front porch, and harassment directed towards my family, I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. I voted third party.
…
I could stay home or vote third party as I did in 2016. But what will that get me? The ability to say “not my problem” or the self-assurance that I didn’t get dirty in having to choose? I have many Christian friends who, when I have discussed this, tell me I should just stay home and turn my back. Both parties, they tell me, are profoundly corrupt. And they’re right. But I am not looking for a messiah in politics and don’t have some religious sentiment tied to my vote. While I understand and accept the sincere conviction of some of my friends who have decided they will just sit out the process, I have decided otherwise. In 2016, we knew who the Democrats were and were not sure of who Donald Trump was. Now we know both and I prefer this President to the alternative.

I will vote for Donald Trump and Mike Pence. And, to be clear, it will not be just because of what the other side offers, but also because of what the Trump-Pence team has done. They’ve earned my vote.

One of the reasons that I’ve always admired Erick is because he’s one of the most honest, forthright and principled guys I know. When he made the decision to oppose Trump in the GOP primary I was solidly with him. I was a Ted Cruz guy and I thought that Donald Trump was, at first, a guy using his candidacy to raise his media profile, and then I viewed him as a polarizing candidate who could not win. Unlike many, or I should say most, NeverTrump types who objected to Trump because they didn’t like his style and held his supporters in contempt, I always felt that Erick had legitimate and principled objections. Where I parted company is with the implication that by voting I’m engaged in some sort of sacrament where only the purist are allowed to run for office. I think the whole horndog train pulled out of the station in 1992 and while I might personally disapprove of it, I see no reason to commit political suicide over something that the rest of the nation doesn’t care about.

Erick was also, to his great credit, one of the handful of NeverTrump people who actually did what they said they were going to do, that is, look at what Trump did and praise or criticize accordingly. Most NeverTrump people continued a visceral antipathy towards Trump and lacked the intellectual honesty or the character to acknowledge that Trump has done more to advance conservative policy in three years than George W. Bush did in eight. The people who guffawed “But Gorsuch” at us as though getting a very conservative and young Supreme Court Justice still refuse to acknowledge what even the leftwing press recognizes: Trump is remaking the federal judiciary.

And some guys are still having none of it (or at least that is how I read this) and I simply can’t understand how anyone can think Kamala Harris is a better choice:

People are going to vote for him simply as a preventative defense measure, which is basically how he win the first time. I won’t be one of them but I 100% understand the mindset Post 2016.

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 10, 2019

This is a good sign for conservativism and for the GOP. It signals this silly civil war that has engulfed us for the past three years may be winding down and that we can begin a period of trying to forgive one another for a surfeit of douchebaggery on both sides.