“Republicans for Biden”? NeverTrumpers Line Up to Support Joe

Joe Biden is reportedly in serious talks with the NeverTrump wing of disaffected Republicans, hoping that people like George Conway, Bill Kristol, and Jeff Flake can provide his campaign with the boost he needs to defeat President Donald Trump in November. Why Biden believes that the same lame cohort that tried to prevent Trump’s presidency in 2016 would be of any use to his campaign in 2020 is beyond our understanding, but he apparently does. As for the NeverTrumpers themselves, their capacity for self-delusion has already been well chronicled.

In remarks to Fox News, an unidentified “anti-Trump member of the GOP” confirmed that they were discussing a collaboration with the former VP.

“As would be natural in any campaign, those organizations that have a shared goal are certainly having conversations about how to achieve that goal,” the person said. “There are folks that are talking to folks on the Biden side to make sure that Donald Trump does not become a two-term president.”

Imagine calling yourself a Republican or a conservative while simultaneously working to elect a man who would bring with him to the White House the single most liberal platform in American presidential history. What can explain that, other than a rampant case of Trump Derangement Syndrome?

In an Instagram chat with soccer star/liberal activist Megan Rapinoe last week, Biden said that he’d been “speaking to a lot of Republicans” who were eager to help him win.

“Matter of fact,” Biden said, “there’s some major Republicans who are already forming ‘Republicans for Biden.’ Major officeholders.”

Sure, sure, Joe. Name one, other than (maybe) Mitt Romney. We’d love to hear the list.

No, we have to imagine that Biden’s Republican conspirators are mostly limited to the same jackals who have been eyeing the MAGA carcass for the last five+ years, hoping desperately for that small opening that will let them “take over” the party. Kristol, Conway, Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, Meghan McCain, Jennifer Rubin, Nicolle Wallace, and the folks plying their trade over at The Bulwark.

These Republicans have an outsized presence in the mainstream media, no doubt about that. The only thing that undercuts their power is the fact that there is almost no such thing as the disaffected Trump voter. The MAGA carcass has not appeared for that simple reason: The movement’s not even close to dead. It’s stronger than ever. What’s dead – what was, actually, never alive – is the NeverTrump movement. It’s a media phenomenon and nothing more.

As Trump himself might say, it’s “sad.”

And if this is where Joe Biden is putting his chips, his candidacy is going to crash and burn in epic fashion.