‘Never Trump’ Republicans search for a home at the RNC

As former President Donald Trump takes center stage as the Republican Party’s presidential nominee for the third time Thursday night, a dwindling number of conservatives who refuse to support him are preparing for a long road ahead. 

“This is a gathering of political orphans,” longtime conservative talk radio host Charlie Sykes said Wednesday night at an event about a half-mile outside the perimeter of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

“People who used to be part of the Republican Party, who have been either excommunicated or exiled are trying to figure out, is there another path?” Sykes said. “Is there a kind of conservatism that will survive Trumpism that is an alternative to Trumpism?” 

The event, organized by an anti-Trump group called Principles First, featured Sykes on a panel with former U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh, a Republican from Illinois. Former Republican Party Chair Michael Steele, attorney George Conway and others spoke to a crowd of fewer than 50 attendees. 

The speakers represent a core group of well-known conservatives who came to be known as the “Never Trump” movement.

“I don’t think I’m being negative when I say that the defeat of ‘Never Trump’ Republicans feels complete at the moment,” Sykes said. 

Walsh said anti-Trump conservatives played an important role in President Joe Biden’s winning coalition in 2020.

“Biden, or whoever the (Democratic) nominee is, has a huge problem right now in energizing their base,” Walsh said. “I think the ‘Never Trump’ aspect of that coalition has broken up as well.” 

Polls show that Trump has a Republican Party united behind him and a generally enthusiastic voter base. A Marquette University Law School poll from last month found that among voters who self-identify as enthusiastic, Trump led Biden 61-39 percent. 

That reality leaves Sykes comparing his brand of conservatism to the Whig Party, a major political party that went defunct in the mid-19th century.

“Is it possible,” Sykes asked, “that traditional conservative Republicans, that they’re finding out this week that they are the Whigs, that they’re a political party that just simply no longer exists?”

Sykes has had a litany of concerns about Trump that he said stem from before he launched his presidential campaign in 2015. 

“I’ve been anti-Trump way before he came down the golden escalator,” he said. 

“The party that is meeting down the street, is undergoing a wrenching change, abandoning decades of support for free markets for internationalism, and certainly it’s a full-throated rejection of Reaganism, but also of long traditions of decency,” he said.

“What I think is the striking thing is the way the Republican Party has completely acquiesced in it,” Sykes said.

Sykes and Walsh both say they will vote for any candidate that has the best chance at beating Trump in November. 

“There are people in this room who have been lifelong conservatives, who are still lifelong conservatives, and yet in November might find themselves voting for Kamala Harris,” Sykes said. “Which would’ve been inconceivable a few years ago, but is a reflection of the times we’re in.” 

Sykes said groups like Principles First have to prepare for a decades-long fight out of the political wilderness. Walsh, however, was less circumspect. 

“I firmly believe that we are living in revolutionary times. I firmly believe that change is coming … The Republican Party continues to shrink. It does. The Democratic Party has their issues. There are a lot of people in this country who are (politically) homeless,” Walsh said. 

“There’s gonna be a third party, a fourth party,” Walsh said. “We’re gonna change the way we run elections. We’re gonna change the way we vote after this election. There’s gonna be a huge marketplace, I think, in reform.”