NeverTrumpers claim they're only on board with getting a Dem elected for one term, because they hate Trump - and more importantly, his voters, who they badly want to purge. If Dems took them at their word, they'd be fools to accept them as allies or take their advice.
After all, you've got a little gang of Benedict Arnold types who are openly, and very loudly, declaring they're only willing to betray their side one time, to deal with a supposedly unique threat. In theory, they're ready to sabotage their Dem allies the day after the election.
Also in theory, if the NeverTrumpers get what they want, they claim they can rebuild the GOP into an unstoppable True Conservative electoral force once Trump and his voters have been purged and/or re-educated. Dems are supposedly courting doom in 2024 by working with them.
But of course, no one in the Dem political leadership takes any of that junk from NeverTrumpers seriously. They see the movement for what it really is: a bid to surrender on electoral politics and resume a comfortable position as gentleman losers, a theatrical opposition.
Watching the NeverTrump movement embrace Mitt Romney as its patron saint goes a long way toward confirming that analysis. What Democrat doesn't relish facing a string of Mitt Romneys for the rest of our lifetimes? It would be a dream come true for them.
Not only was Romney easy to beat - and the same playbook would work, with few adjustments, against every GOP candidate who runs like he did - but he was vicious toward his GOP primary opponents, especially those who showed a glimmer of populist promise.
People forget that about Romney. He was a milquetoast pushover in the general, spending the entire 2012 campaign on stunned defense against waves of vicious populist attacks from Obama, but he was a shark in the primaries. He excelled at damaging other Republicans.
Romney was the beta test for NeverTrump: aggressive against other Repubs, with enough money and clout in GOP circles to land body blows, but passive and purely defensive against Dems. Only passionate about "principles" and "morals" when fighting other Republicans.
Let me put it bluntly: Romney would NEVER have voted to convict a Democrat president on the same terms he used against Trump. Just try to imagine him saying the same words about Obama or any other Democrat. You'll have trouble holding in the laughter.
That's what NeverTrump really offers to Democrats, and that's why they'll make common cause. Promises to purge Trumpism and whip the GOP into an unbeatable Reaganesque fighting machine is hot air - or, at best, nostalgia for a political landscape that no longer exists. /end
