'Trump was the gateway drug': How conservatives became a 'decisive' part of the Democratic coalition

During the 2020 presidential election, a long list of well-known conservatives endorsed or supported Democratic now-President Joe Biden over MAGA Republican Donald Trump — including GOP activist Cindy McCain (the late Sen. John McCain's widow), former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona), Washington Post columnist George Will, ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, The Bulwark's Charlie Sykes, and former GOP strategists who include The Bulwark's Tim Miller and The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson.

That isn't to say that they don't have policy differences with the Biden Administration. But as Never Trump conservatives see it, Trump and his MAGA movement pose an existential threat to U.S. democracy.

In an article published by The New Republic on September 21, journalist Ben Jacobs describes Never Trump voters as a small yet important part of the Democratic coalition.

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"This tranche of voters is not huge, but they may be decisive," Jacobs reports. "In 2020, 16 percent of self-identified moderate or liberal Republicans voted for Biden, according to an analysis by Pew — twice the share that did so in 2016. This, even as Biden won a narrow Electoral College victory by a combined margin of just under 43,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin."

Democratic pollster Zac McCrary views Never Trumpers as a good fit for his party's moderate/centrist wing.

McCrary told The New Republic, "I think Donald Trump was the gateway drug that has drawn a lot of otherwise pretty standard Republicans to the Democratic Party over the last eight or nine years. And a Never Trump Republican in 2016, two or three cycles later, turns into a pretty conventional Democrat up and down the ballot."

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Read The New Republic's full article at this link.