Conservative commentator Erick Erickson is not the sharpest knife in the drawer—“I’m okay with being the object of scorn from morons,” is his bio on the site I still call Twitter. Every once in a while, though, he comes up with an interesting observation. Last week he tweeted about having an increasing number of “private conversations” with Republicans who are secretly hoping former president Donald Trump loses this November.

“If Trump gets in, we set back the pro-life cause and free markets by a generation at least,” Erickson’s “source” told him. Trump’s flip-flops on abortion—he was against Florida’s six-week abortion ban before he was for it, admitting he’d vote against a referendum establishing abortion rights in the state—have worried the extreme anti-choice right, and his promise of increased tariffs rattle free-marketeers. “No amount of bullying [by Trump supporters saying] ‘but you’re helping Harris’ is going to fix this,” his post closes. “Only Trump pivoting can.”

Ah, there’s the undying hope for that pivot again! So-called “reasonable Republicans” have been waiting for Trump to pivot away from overt racism, cruelty, sexist attacks on women, and increasingly batshit crazy “threads” of mental effluvia since he declared his candidacy more than nine years ago. It hasn’t happened, and it won’t.

In fact, I might dismiss Erickson’s “private conversations” if Politico’s Jonathan Martin hadn’t reported the same story today. Neither Erickson’s post nor Martin’s article, unfortunately, name names—that’s the point of the “secret” whispering. “Asking around with Republicans last week, the most fervent private debate I came across in the party was how best to accelerate Trump’s exit to the 19th Hole,” he wrote. Some thought the party could survive a Kamala Harris presidency, especially if the GOP takes the Senate.

“One high-level Republican,” Martin added, “conceding it may only be ‘wishful thinking,’ even floated the idea of a Harris victory followed by Biden pardons of both his son, Hunter, and Trump. That would take the issue of both cases off Harris’s plate and, more to the point, drain the energy behind Trump’s persecution complex so that Republicans can get on with the business of winning elections.”

Fat chance that a woman running on her record as a prosecutor will “pardon Trump.” And it’s not her responsibility to “drain the energy” from his persecution mania; it’s the responsibility of Republicans who know better—that the 2020 election was not stolen, that January 6 was an attempted coup—to do that.

Current Issue

March 2025 Issue

The real problem with the Trump-loses scenario is that it relies on rejection by actual voters. I believe this is possible, and increasingly likely, but it will be the result of mobilizing the Democrats’ base and persuading independents, not converting the MAGA faithful. “You’re assuming Republicans have a top of the ticket problem and not a voter base problem,” Terry Sullivan, a former GOP strategist and Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 campaign manager, told Martin. “It’s not like our leaders have been leading the voters to the wilderness against the voters’ judgment.”

Voters are where they are now, but how they got there is somewhat debatable. Ever since the election of our first Black president, Barack Obama, Republicans have been feeding the base a pretty steady diet of red meat—Donald Trump started the “birther” smear, but stalwart, principled Mitt Romney made birther jokes, too. He and his running mate, Representative Paul Ryan, painted Obamacare as a welfare program that was stealing funds from Medicare, with not-so-subtle racial coding. Sullivan’s former employer, Rubio, began as a Trump opponent only to become one of his chief defenders, even winding up a finalist for the VP slot that went to hapless JD Vance. National and local party leaders have become increasingly comfortable stoking white fear and grievance, whether under code terms like “critical race theory” and “diversity, equity and inclusion,” and “replacement theory,” as though whites are an increasingly threatened minority in their own country.

Let’s make clear: I’m not calling anyone animals. But it makes me think of pit bulls. Most dog trainers believe they aren’t inherently violent or aggressive, and can be trained to be loving family pets. I’ve met plenty. On the other hand, some owners breed them for cruelty. In a way, that’s what the steady diet of white grievance has done to MAGA voters. And now these cowardly Republicans are afraid they’ll be mauled; that’s why they’re only whispering their reservations about Trump.

Plenty of Republicans have done the decent thing and made their way either out of the party entirely, or at least out of Trump’s thrall: George Conway, Tara Setmeyer, Rick Wilson, Tim Miller, Charlie Sykes, Cindy McCain, Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, Tom Nichols… it’s a long list. You could follow their path. Or you can continue to snivel to friends and reporters who will keep your confidence.

There’s a saying about the virtue in putting “country over party,” for the good of all Americans. This isn’t even putting “party over country,” because they’re admitting Trump is hurting their party. I don’t entirely know what to call it, since I’ve already used the word “cowardly” too many times. “Pathetic” comes to mind.