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The first time I can remember hearing the name Ken Cuccinelli, it was in 2016. The one-time Ted Cruz adviser had just dramatically thrown his credentials on the ground of Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena in what Breitbart — at the time perhaps the single most enthusiastically pro-MAGA media outlet — called a “spectacle on the floor of the Republican National Convention as part of the last dying breaths of the ‘Never Trump’ collective.” The next time I was forced to consider Cuccinelli it was 2019, when he’d just joined the Trump administration as the acting Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services. A few months later, he became acting Deputy Director for the Department of Homeland Security.
This is not an article about Ken Cuccinelli, though. It’s about one of the proudest traditions of the modern Republican Party, and those, like Cuccinelli, in whom it’s embodied. This is about the perennial rise of “Never Trump” conservatives, and their inevitable fall back into MAGA’s politically expedient embrace.
It’s a cycle as predictable as it is depressing, manifesting of late in the wake of Trump’s 34 felony charges by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, for allegedly orchestrating and then obscuring a hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump has responded to his latest legal threat by turning the charges into a referendum for the GOP, his messaging taking the form of a “you’re either with me or against me” challenge. As we saw in the aftermath of Jan. 6, erstwhile defectors risk the humiliation of having to slink back to the fold once it becomes clear that Trump’s political base remains not only intact, but a necessary bloc for their own political futures. It’s the latest example of Trump’s innate ability to flatten any issue into a lopsided binary, with himself as the fulcrum, knowing full well that his political center of gravity is enough to overwhelm the modest protestations of those who dare pretend their conservatism is markedly different from his own.
Take, for instance, former New Jersey Governor and bridge enthusiast Chris Christie who even before Bragg’s charges dropped had begun his own trek along that already well-worn path, heroically vowing to not endorse the former president’s third run for the White House, after having backed Trump in both 2016 and 2020. “I can’t help him, no way,” Christie told Axios, adding later that “when you have the Jan. 6 choir at a rally and you show video of it — I just don’t think that person is appropriate for the presidency.” Christie, Trump’s earliest high-profile supporter against Hillary Clinton, noted that he’d previously written off any apprehension about endorsing his onetime GOP primary rival in 2016 because “you probably have concerns about any candidate other than yourself in the end.”
That Christie is reportedly mulling a 2024 presidential bid of his own is important here; the pivot from Oreo-denied sycophant — someone whose desperate hope to be named attorney general was the pathetic stuff memes are made of —to anti-Trump crusader earned the former governor enough credulous media coverage to make any aspiring candidate swoon. It also raises the depressing specter of Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, Ted Cruz, and the editorial board of the National Review, all of whom were celebrated for rejecting Trump in similarly emphatic terms, only for them each to come slithering back into the MAGA fold the moment they realized which way the conservative wind was blowing.
Here we have the basic steps of Never Trump tango, a herky-jerky conservative dance that ranks higher on the cringe scale than even that time thousands of democrats did the macarena. First you make a public denunciation that gives the impression of having some sort of principled, moral objection to Trump. Then, when it becomes unavoidably clear that Trump will nevertheless remain the focal point of the Republican party, you quietly slink back into his temporary good graces — or at least the temporary good graces of his fanatical MAGA bloc —by saying something like “well, the people have spoken,” or “I respect the will of the voters,” or “right now I’m focusing on our country’s real enemy: trans kids.”
None of this would be possible if not for a conservative media infrastructure that for the better part of the past decade has positioned Trump as a semi-religious figurehead in a fight against supernatural evil. For a Republican to go full Never Trump is to risk turning themselves into a pariah for the goulash of TV networks, content creators, broadcasters, and digital influencers that hold sway over enormous swaths of conservative voters — a political death sentence for any conservative lawmaker banking on continued relevance in the GOP. Even Fox News — having itself dabbled with a bastard form of Never Trumpism for a time — has begun its inevitable pivot back toward their golden goose and the ratings bonanza he brings. To the extent that there are spaces for Never Trump Republicans to thrive, it’s largely outside of electoral politics itself, trading a congressional seat for one on a CNN panel. That, or as part of some cloyingly online group like The Lincoln Project, which seem to exist solely to shitpost and rake in cash from #Resistance libs. These are the lucrative but pathetically limited options.
Which brings us back to Chris Christie, and his hubristic vow not to support Trump this time around. I have no doubt his feelings toward the former president are fueled in part by the humiliation he suffered both for, and by, Trump — particularly after getting unceremoniously kicked to the curb, and denied multiple roles in his administration. But emotional grudges only take you so far in politics, and Christie is, if nothing else, a fairly savvy political operator.
Though Trump currently leads in the polls, he remains uniquely threatened by last week’s criminal indictments from Bragg — to say nothing of other potential charges on the horizon. And when news of those indictments broke, even Trump’s most opportunistic rivals, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence bent over backwards to join with — and capitalize on —the conservative-wagon circling around the former president. Like atheists in a foxhole, Never Trumpers are a rare breed in a Fox News bonanza.
For the time being, then, Christie’s bet is that there’s a narrow potential lane for an aggressively Never Trump politician to position themselves as the mythological “adult in the room” — one who can return the GOP to its halcyon days of respectable, civilized bigotry. In 2023, to invoke the “party of Reagan” is to superficially pine for a bygone era of a more polite, polished version of the xenophobia and corporate grift we see today, simply delivered at what most elementary school teachers would call “an indoor voice.” It’s instructive to remember that it took just three years for the conservative Reagan Battalion social media hub to go from publicly vowing to “never ever Support Donald Trump! not now, not ever!” to backing him in 2020 because, among other reasons “we like our farting cows.” Never Trumpers savvy enough to name drop Reagan do so not because his was a presidency they actually want to emulate, but because they hope enough voters and donors care more about the style, rather than the substance, of their political endgame.
For Christie, that means being evidently willing to risk immediate backlash from the former president and his ilk in the hopes that a monopoly on this narrow path can and will lead to future success in a post-Trump GOP. But if (or as looks increasingly likely, when) Trump maintains his grip on a party he’s spent years priming for this exact purpose, then Christie’s Never Trump lane closes down entirely, and it’s time for some traffic problems in his political future. It’s one thing to make a big show of how principled your anti-Trumpism is in a Republican primary, where mud slinging, backstabbing, and any other rancorous political cliches are the name of the game. But when it comes down to it in the general election, the overwhelming majority of deeply concerned Republicans will inevitably fall in line behind Trump if for no other reason than his is the only line available.
At that point Christie will face a choice — the choice — like DeSantis, Pence, and all the other Republican aspirants who’ve come before him. He can stick to his guns and banish himself to the sparse hinterlands of professional Never Trumpers, the disparate constellation of outdated Republican gadflies who skulk on the periphery of the political discourse and largely serve to make mainstream liberals feel better about themselves. If Chris Christie wants to play an active role in the GOP of the future, though, it’s likely just a matter of time before he starts respecting “the will of the voters” who “have made their choice.” Because when you’re a Never Trumper, it’s always smart to never say never.
