Future of the anti-Trump GOP voters

[Brother Jonathan]

I tried to write out a lengthy response to this, detailing what I saw as the various anti-Trump factions in the GOP, but I think that is sort of an exercise in futility at this point. Generally, voters who have left the GOP during the Trump era had been drifting from the party for some time anyway (for many and varied reasons) and Trump was really just the last straw. Their are so many reasons that Republican voters have objected to Trump, and the degree to which it has driven them away from the party and reasons for the divide both dictate what response they will have when Trump is no longer leading the ticket. Some don't think Trump is a real conservative, others think he is too conservatives, some think he is just unpatriotic or too divisive. Some just think he himself is too aberrant, but that Trumpism itself isn't all that objectionable. Some of his critics see him as a betrayal of the the Tea Party/Freedom Caucus movement, others see him as the fulfillment of that movement. It's a group with broad disagreements, but it's ultimately a small group in the grand scheme of things.

I think more than anything, though, it is Trump himself that has motivated these Republicans to leave. They are called "Never Trump" Republicans for a reason. To that end, most of these voters would not vote for a Trumpian candidate stylistically regardless of what policies he advocated for, but of course that's not true of all Anti-Trump Republicans. Again, it's a broad and far from homogenous group, and most of the voters we would call anti-Trump have much deeper objections to long term trends in the Republican Party (rhetorical and policy wise) that were largely personified in Donald Trump.  It's a broad but ultimately small group that represents a large number of long standing objections to the Republican Party from all sides of the party. Justin Amash and Bill Kristol were often at odds, and from very different factions of the pre-Trump GOP, but that they can agree that they don't like Donald Trump and his Republican party is emblematic of the divide within anti-Trump Republican circles.

As an anti-Trump GOP voter, I have resigned myself to political homelessness for the next few years at least. I suppose I will return to voting Republican down ballot more regularly, but I don't know if I will vote for a Republican presidential ticket within the next decade or so. I suspect others are in roughly the same boat. But anyway, that's my general impression of it.