When someone is routinely baffled by real-world outcomes—that others don’t do what he would find so easy—we must question his grasp of reality.

I’ve noticed this with many NeverTrump Christians. They appear to share many of our values. Yet they fail to see our conclusions. 1/7 https://twitter.com/davidafrench/status/1322032585783074817

These NeverTrumpers are comfortable in a world of theory. They love American ideals, and cannot understand why anyone would reject them. They are surprised it keeps happening (and getting worse), when it seems so easy for everyone to just return to such reasonable principles. 2/7

Conflating political norms with higher principles, these NeverTrumpers express particular frustration at conservatives and Christians willing to follow Trump in abandoning these norms—when in theory these norms could work so well to protect our shared principles. 3/7

These NeverTrumpers also believe that with just a little more explanation and proof of good faith by the right, both sides can agree to restore our political norms. They just cannot understand why liberals keep rejecting our principles—principles so fair and reasonable. 4/7

Most of us who have embraced the Trump-led political turn have not changed our principles. Rather, our understanding of the world has changed.

We recognize that political norms the right has long accepted have handicapped us. The left has only grown bolder in rejecting them. 5/7

The right’s approach has failed for decades. The left’s increasingly radical actions makes change more urgent.

This reality requires that we adopt a new strategy to protect our principles. NeverTrumpers fail to see this—just as they fail to understand the left’s actions. 6/7

Some NeverTrumpers are simply grifters. Some were never conservatives. Yet many share our values, but fail to understand the world as it exists today and the political implications of this world. 7/7