THE LAST OF THE NEVERTRUMPS.

Peter Spiliakos at National Review:

I can’t have contempt for Trump supporters as a group. Some — Sean Hannity and Newt Gingrich, for example — are contemptible, but they were that way when Trump was just a game-show host. I know and respect many Trump supporters in my personal life, and I know several of the authors in the Scholars and Writers for Trump group...

Scholars and Writers -- you mean these numbnuts? Bill Bennett? Roger L. Simon? Thomas Lifson, the biggest dummy at American Thinker? This is like saying, "Martin Shkreli's kind of a dick, but that Bernie Madoff, he's so mild-mannered."

Anyway, Spiliakos' shtick is Come Let Us Wingnut Together:

It isn’t clear that Trump has the slightest interest in the principles of American government — whether it is his desire to “open up” libel laws so that he can legally persecute his critics or his offhand suggestion that he would implement national stop-and-frisk policing despite a total lack of presidential authority to do any such thing. Trump’s only consistent principle is to do and say whatever is best for Trump in the moment. He is a demagogue.

But that does not, by itself, make the case against Trump. He is a demagogue, but he might be our demagogue.

Blink. Blink.

Let us remember the weaponization of the IRS by the Obama administration, and that the famous Citizens United case was about the government trying to prevent the release of a film that was critical of Hillary Clinton.

You mean when Tea Party operatives portrayed themselves as humble pastors of the Constitution, and propagandists portrayed themselves as artists, and they all got away with it?

Clinton is also a demagogue, who dismisses Trump supporters as “deplorables” and Bernie Sanders supporters as deluded, mom’s-basement-dwelling losers.

i.e.: Clinton referred ingraciously to racist nuts and Nazi frogs and, despite Spiliakos' debunked bullshit, with sympathy to the Sanderistas. She's just like Mussolini!

If we are reduced to a choice between two demagogues, each contemptuous of the rule of law, it might make sense to pick the one that is on our side.

I'm guessing even some National Review readers are looking at this and thinking, "Last weekend Donald Trump tweeted through the night about how Miss Universe is a whore because she sassed him back."

Except that Trump is not on our side. Trump is on Trump’s side...

C'mon, dude, shit or get off the pot.

This still leaves the argument that, even if Trump is a demagogue, and is unreliable, he is still better than Clinton. This is a strong argument...

Now I'm thinking: what's the market for this? Even in wingnut world is there anyone who would hang on the spectacle of Spiliakos mooning like a maiden in a melodrama over the simian figure of Trump? Eventually he tells us his plan is to "write in someone's name," and then huddle for warmth with his fellow conservatives:

...But if Trump wins, his principled critics and his principled supporters should work together to help him when he is right and oppose him when he is wrong.

(Last coherent thought as his body and everything within hundreds of miles turns to ash) "Well, we tried."

If Trump loses, those same groups should work together to build a post-Trump Right that addresses the concerns of Trump’s working-class supporters and earns the votes of persuadable Americans who could not be persuaded to vote for Trump.

"Gather round, boys, have some snuff! Or chaw if you prefer. Don't crowd, now, stand well back. You like wrestling, don't you? Well, our new candidate Son of the Undertaker is going to body-slam the deficit with STOP WHAT ARE YOU DOING AHHH IT HURTS AHHHHHHH"

Whatever happens, we should recognize one another as friends divided by prudential differences in difficult circumstances. Whatever happens, we should reconcile on the basis of our shared principles — because whatever happens, we will share the same fate.

(Picks up papers from podium, waits for applause; hears instead in the distance the feral children from A Canticle for Liebowitz screaming "EAT! EAT!"; ceiling collapses.) A short life, but a merry one!