Never Trumpers and the Future of American Conservatism

Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites
by Robert P. Saldin and Steven M. Teles
Oxford University Press

… Political scientists Robert Saldin and Steven Teles, authors of studies on health reform, the effects of war on the U.S. government, and the conservative legal movement, examine how and why elites from the extended Republican party network came to oppose their party’s nominee. In fact, Saldin and Teles write, “there has never been a party in the Western world that was elected and sought to govern with such a wide range of intraparty opposition.”

With extensive quotation from their “informants”—the sixty-two individuals they interviewed between May 2017 and October 2019—Saldin and Teles articulate the convictions of Never Trumpers with clarity and fair-mindedness. They “hope that even those who disagree deeply with the Never Trumpers will learn at least a little something about the very human motivations that caused them to make the choices they did.”

Saldin and Teles don’t focus only on their interviewees’ beliefs about the president and his party. As social scientists, they also identify material and structural factors—financial livelihoods, audience ratings, party patronage, and donor networks—that allowed some members of the extended conservative network to break with their party but worked to keep many others in line. CONT.