This mini-debate is fascinating; they’re just talking past each other.

Caruso is talking about how to save the GOP; whereas Sykes is talking about how to save the country.

Which pretty much sums up the difference between NeverTrump and the anti-antis. https://twitter.com/jaycaruso/status/1284502930670878720?s=21

Caruso claims that NeverTrumpers have no “after” plan for the GOP once Dems crush then in the election.

He’s right, but that’s beside the point. NTs don’t KNOW how to get the GOP off it’s corrupted path; they’re exiles from its current incarnation.

So the NeverTrumpers are focused on something else. They view Trump, and all his enablers, as toxic to the American polity, and their goal is only to save that, even if it means left-wing policies reign for a few years.

Because they believe America is more important.

The angry anti-antis like Caruso don’t see the GOP in its current state as a material threat to the American system, so they don’t see the need to cleanse the whole bunch. “It’s a few bad apples” or some such.

They focus on moderates like Collins because they’re still focused on political/issue/partisan disputes so they see her as a moderate bridge to healing.

But to the NeverTrumpers she’s as bad as the rest; she enabled/acquitted Trump while supposedly knowing better.

My own view: I think the angry anti-antis can’t even admit what the NeverTrump argument really is, because then they would have to take stand on it. And they know they’ve dipped a few too many toes into the moral cesspool to come out clean at this point.

So instead the AAAS pretend the NeverTrumpers are just wackos and zealots, and frame this through the usual partisan lenses, so that no clarity ever really comes.

That way they can pretend to maintain some moral high ground. “I don’t like Trump either, but this is too much!”

But that’s not really a position in the world of Trump; at this point you’re either getting him out or helping keep him in. The AAA position is just pretend. And for America, I think, the time for pretend is over.

So as people die from the pandemic (while the GOP fights science and focuses on optics), and anonymous federal goons swipe people off the street, and corruption runs rampant while POTUS hawks beans, I guess I agree with @SykesCharlie: its time for us all to take a clear stand.