1) The answer to this is easy and difficult to hear.

There is only one reason someone will not fight for a cause: you don't really believe it.

This is why the Bootlesses, the Goldburgers, the Broken Kristols and the rest found it so easy to abandon Trump. https://twitter.com/johncardillo/status/1265242402564067328

2) Historian Paul Johnson once said of LBJ's "peace initiatives" and "bombing pauses" that these were not viewed by the enemy as signs of humanity and temperance, but of lack of conviction.

3) If the "conservative" issues were ever important to any of these people, . . .

3) contd . . . they wouldn't for one second blink because of how Donald Trump expresses himself or because of something he tweets.

4) When told Gen. Ulysses Grant might be an alcoholic, President Lincoln simply said, "I can't spare the man. He fights."

5) Dwight Eisenhower said the same thing about George Patton. While appreciating the gravity of Patton slapping soldiers (2), nevertheless he was never so stupid as to remove his most effective field commander.

6) But many in the current GOP are concerned with style . . .

6) contd . . . precisely because they NEVER believed in the substance. They gave lip service to state's rights, to pro-life, to black outreach, to empowering the middle class, and to balanced budgets.

These were convenient talking points they could write about and maintain . . .

6) contd . . . their little columns, their cruises, their spots on Faux or other networks, and their place at "the in crowd" cocktail parties.

7) It was ALWAYS a charade. They never once believed in these principles.