It was only a week or so ago that people were asking what it said about Vichy Republicans that travel under the name NeverTrump that they were encouraging the candidacy of the likes of Bill Weld, Joe freakin Walsh, and Mark Sanford (for the Mark Sanford fans, I’d remind you that he got his ass handed to him in his primary election by Katie Arrington and, as a result, Sanford sat on his hands and allowed the Democrats to win that seat by less than a percentage point, so please don’t bore me with stories about his political acumen) as an alternative to President Trump in the GOP primary. What it said, in my view, is pretty obvious. The most prominent NeverTrumpers are widely viewed as quislings and no one who wishes a career in conservative or GOP politics is going to associate with them for fear that the stench will permanently attach to them. The very best this bunch can hope for is it damage President Trump in a primary so he gimps into the general election like George H. W. Bush and gets beaten by some Democrat third stringer. The worst they can do is actively support the Democrat nominee…wait, what did I just say?

Republicans opposed to President Trump are quietly preparing to support Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, backing that could materialize in the primary as he attempts to fend off a surging Elizabeth Warren.

Some Republican operatives active in Never Trump circles are discussing the timing and what form support for Biden might take. Groups such as Stand Up Republic, co-founded by prominent Never Trump Republicans Evan McMullin and Mindy Finn, could target disaffected GOP voters in key micro-battlegrounds with finely tailored advertising in a bid to boost Biden in the Democratic primary.

…

Ana Navarro-Cárdenas, a Florida GOP operative who backed Jeb Bush in 2016 and has been close to Sen. Marco Rubio, attended a Biden campaign event last weekend, sitting on the front row stroking her dog Chacha. Biden turned to her and said, “I’ve got to sort of genuflect in this direction here because I’m afraid of her. No. I’m embarrassing her, I know — that’s my intention. We’ve been good friends for a long time.”

But Biden isn’t looking terribly strong right now. My gut feeling is that his current 20-something percent polling is his ceiling and as other candidates drop, their support will not go to Joe Biden. What happens when Elizabeth Warren gets the nomination (this is my prediction though I think Biden would be a much more difficult race for Trump)?

“Never Trump means what it says: Never Trump. Under no circumstances can you embrace that man coming back to the White House,” countered Jerry Taylor, who runs the Niskanen Center, a centrist Washington think tank that has become a gathering spot for anti-Trump Republicans. “Most Never Trump Republicans that I traffic with are of the mind that any electoral outcome that doesn’t return Donald Trump to the White House is a good outcome, save for the wild card of Bernie Sanders.”

It’s time to call this nonsense exactly what it is. The NeverTrump people are not conservatives and they are not Republicans. They petulant little kids who are engaged in virtue signaling in the short term. Their conceit is that if they contribute to a Trump defeat that the GOP that remains after the defeat will call upon the people who contributed to that fiasco and give them leadership positions and lucrative consulting contracts. It’s not going to happen. If they persist in this they will be ridiculed and ostracized as the assclowns and quislings they are regardless of Trump’s fate in 2020.

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