Most have been branded Never Trumpers and mostly kind of lie low on policy differences (perhaps) in the interest of making common cause - which is not terrible overall. I'm thinking of Patrick Chovanec.
Yeah I assume most of these people are just conservative Dems now
Although it’s interesting because you’d think you’d see a legitimate non-astroturfed movement to like, shift Dems right on certain issues that you’d expect Republican never-Trump party switchers would be concerned with
I know the left loves to claim this is happening constantly, but I feel like even in cases like Manchin or Tester or whoever, right wing Dems are usually highly individual, you don’t see a ton of legitimately calculated right-leaning Dem candidates, nor a lot of demand for them
Which to me unfortunately suggests that a lot of people who appeared to be “reasonable” conservatives 10 or 20 years ago may have just been hiding their power level.
This actually concerns me a little on things like LGBT rights. I genuinely would expect there to be quite a few people(not just mainstream contrarian journalists, but large numbers)going like “look Trump is a toddler who wants to dynamite humanity,so I’m a Dem, but I’m not crazy abt the queer stuff”
I think 2015 conservatives have found themselves with three options: (a) Find a way to be happy with Trump; (b) Find a way being happy as a mainstream Dem; (c) Find a way to be happy being isolated and powerless. Prominent ones mostly went with A, the rest split between B and C.
In my case I went with C (isolated and powerless) but this might be because I was a conservative in the SF Bay Area, so I was already used to the "isolated and powerless" thing. That said, I *do* find myself reassessing a lot of my past opinions. (On immigration & LGBT stuff and a lot besides.)
I just say I'm in the wilderness, particularly since the Libertarians (which could have been a sorta back-up option) went even more bonkers than they used to be. And I was already outside the party on immigration and LGBT stuff, anyway.
I’m only a “conservative” in a sense that I’m an actual-meaning liberal & want to conserve the (liberal) American revolution.
I definitely feel extra politically homeless right now.
I voted Romney in 2012 because I thought he was genuinely right about the economy (AND RUSSIA!) but I've gotten considerably more left leaning in the ensuing 12 years
the Russia pivot is genuinely bizarre to me
because I grew up with Cold War movies. my parents had to give me the talk, even though the Soviet Union fell when I was 3, about how Russians weren’t all bad people like the movies
yeah idk if he would've picked off enough voters had he run on what he actually accomplished but he was already a Mormon trying to win over the Christian right, pointing to THOSE left leaning policy accomplishments probably would've given Obama a puncher's chance in like Texas
And there are a lot of Christians, right-wing and otherwise, that are rather concerned about the Mormon church which definitely made things more difficult for him.
I'll never forget when during the late stage 2012 GOP primaries the national media had a field day with him being the only person not on his second+ marriage
True, but I'm not sure how many people that support same sex marriage honestly believed that Romney would ever change. It was, at least for me, easier to imagine Obama shifting on this as it wouldn't go against the party line as hard as it would with the GOP.
Romney had a proven track record of following the legislative branch *against his personal politics/morals* on this issue.
Look, it wouldn’t be perfect but a government made entirely of Mitt Romney clones would be infinitely better than what we have today.
