For all the caterwauling about Trump having a personality cult, the big knock against many of his supporters is that they're too "transactional" - i.e. hypocritical, willing to set "principles" aside for specific policy gains.
Meanwhile, the anti-Trump cult of personality is so strong that some nominal conservatives and moderate pundits are willing to either support a Marxist radical or passively accept his extremism by declaring they'll sit the race out or cast a protest vote.
Their big grumble after some horrifying statements from Bernie Sanders is that Bernie's going to get Trump re-elected and maybe give the House back to Republicans. They're not really arguing with any of his remarks or policies - they're just anguished about Trump winning.
If the anti-Trump cult of personality confronted the substance of Sanders' statements or proposals, they'd have to start looking at the substance of Trump's record as president instead of just carping about what he says at rallies or posts on Twitter.
They can't do that, because then they'd have to admit they were wrong. They can't do it even when Sanders is pushing a doomsday collectivist agenda and vowing to attack every single conservative principle at its core. They can't take their eyes off Trump's Twitter feed.
That's the functional definition of a personality cult: only the object of the cult's fixation matters. The virtues and motivations projected by the cultists into the Great Man they're obsessed with matter much more than the real-world results of what he actually DOES.
This can take the form of contempt as well as veneration. As Sanders worships the "intentions" and "pure" socialists goals of the 20th Century's monstrous tyrants while downplaying the horrors they inflicted, so NeverTrump cares only about his alleged motives, not his results.
That's one of the reasons "True Conservatives" will come around to supporting the Marxist that promises to destroy every last vestige of conservatism: they'll accept the Left's insistence that Sanders is morally superior to Trump and really wants the best for everyone.
For many NeverTrumpers, this is all still about validating their opposition to him in 2016, so they're not inclined to dwell on the details of things he's actually done since he was elected, and they certainly won't blame themselves for anything Sanders does if HE gets elected.
They're not thinking about the damage to conservatism that would be caused by a Sanders win, or worrying about the dangers of HIS personality cult, which has already demonstrated itself to be vicious and deeply anti-(small r)-republican.
They're not thinking about how revising American politics to make Sanders acceptable will muscle out what remains of the conservatism they claim to care about. There isn't much room for your precious principles in a land where Bernie Sanders becomes the "center-Left."
Some of that damage will be done by mainstream media networks that invite their favorite tame "conservative" pundits onto the op-ed pages and Sunday shows to validate Sanders as an acceptable alternative to the hated Trump.
It will end as a complete inversion of the NeverTrump slam against conservative Trump voters. Those Trump voters have been pilloried for years because they supposedly compromised deep principles to accept Trump, but now NeverTrump will abandon EVERY principle to accept Sanders.
And we're not talking about rhetorical stuff like religious voters supposedly displaying hypocrisy by accepting Trump's trash talk and crass behavior in exchange for policies that matter to them. Sanders will actively seek and destroy every shred of conservatism.
But none of that matters if conservatism is just a rhetorical exercise for you, a paid gig as devil's advocate. Bright side: you'll have even MORE to complain ineffectually about for the rest of your career, with even less chance that you'll ever be held responsible for anything.
So much for "standing athwart history and yelling STOP!" Now it will be standing behind history and muttering that it should have stopped. For the anti-Trump cult of personality, Sanders will be Trump's fault, not theirs. They're already writing those op-eds in their heads. /end
