In Dante’s “Inferno,” as I’ve previously written, moral cowards aren’t even allowed into hell. They are the “sorry souls” stuck in the vestibule where they are doomed to be forgotten. “The world will let no fame of theirs endure,” Dante’s guide, Virgil, explains. “Let us not talk of them but look and pass.”
Actually, let’s talk about them.
We know their names — the anti-Trump Republicans like former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Mitt Romney, former Rep. Paul Ryan, former Gov. Chris Christie, former President George W. Bush, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens — who reject Trump but cannot bring themselves to vote for the one candidate who could stop him. And we also know the names of the allegedly anti-Trump conservatives who have since fallen in line behind a second Trump term — from former Gov. Nikki Haley to Gov. Chris Sununu and the editors of National Review. Polls would suggest that the vast majority of Republican and conservative voters are following their lead.
Many of these officials and pundits recognize the dangers that Trump poses, but want to preserve their “relevance” in the party.
Many of these officials and pundits recognize the dangers that Trump poses, but want to preserve their “relevance” in the party; others clearly hope for Trump’s defeat, but want to keep their hands clean by staying above the fray and casting a write-in vote.
But then there are also the lifelong conservatives who have defied partisan loyalty and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris: former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Rep. Liz Cheney; former Rep. Adam Kinzinger; Judge Michael Luttig; former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez; retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal; Georgia’s former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan; former Sens. Jeff Flake and Nancy Kassebaum; First Lt. Jimmy McCain; former Rep. Joe Walsh; Times columnist David French, Washington Post columnist George Will, and a host of former GOP aides.
Last week, I joined them, and made it clear to my fellow Wisconsinites that I intend to vote for Harris.
To be sure, the pro-Harris conservatives represent a tiny faction — you might even say a rump caucus — of the GOP. But despite the small numbers, we could still be important in what promises to be a razor-close race. A recent New York Times poll found that Harris “has begun making inroads among Republicans: 9 percent said they planned to support her, up slightly from 5 percent last month.” In Wisconsin (where the race is essentially tied), the latest Marquette Law School poll found a small, but potentially decisive group of undecided voters: “conflicted partisans are mostly Republican voters who have big personal qualms about Trump.”
So let’s not the not underestimate the significance of the GOP defections. A while back, I wrote in The Atlantic: “Before Trump, the ideological divide between Harris and conservative Republicans might have been too large to bridge. But this is not a normal campaign.”
And that is the Great Divide.
Many on the right simply cannot shift their mindset and stop seeing this election as a more-or-less traditional choice between the right and the left. Yes, they say, Trump is deplorable and unfit, but Kamala Harris is a progressive. They cite her position on taxes, on guns, on the border, on transgender rights, the environment, business regulations and spending.








