There are many good essays in the new edition of the Claremont Review of Books, but I want to draw attention to William Voegeli’s excellent analysis of the Never Trump movement in his review of Never Trump, The Revolt of the Conservative Elites by Robert P. Saldin and Stephen M. Teles.

Voegeli traces how the Never Trump analysis went from opposing Trump as a candidate to opposing what was taken to be his authoritarian threat to democracy itself. By raising the stakes this high, Never Trumpers have also come to repudiate conservatism itself as something they did not fully understand, even while putatively claiming to have led it. Finally, with Trump’s popular vote victory in 2024, many were confronted with condemning the democratic majority of........

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