The GOP lies fractured over Trump’s candidacy — but it didn’t have to be this way.

One of the questions that has hung in the air since Donald Trump effectively clinched the GOP nomination a month ago is whether the #NeverTrump movement — the large-scale rupture between the Republican nominee and, at a minimum, a large swath of the conservative movement — was an inevitable result of a Trump nomination. I think it was not — at least, not inevitable simply due to Trump’s record before running. Trump brought this on himself — and is still doing so. If a lingering conservative resistance to Trump was inevitable, it’s only because this is who Trump is.

Let’s think back to an alternative universe where Trump approached his campaign differently. Donald Trump is not a stupid man, and he clearly put some thought into certain aspects of his presidential run. For example, in 2014 he read — or at least claimed to read — Rick Santorum’s book Blue Collar Conservatives, and cited it to Santorum at the time as inspiration for the working-class focused message he would go on to make the centerpiece of his campaign. While that message was in line with some of Trump’s prior inclinations (he had been blasting foreign trade, especially with Asia, for a quarter century), it is clear that Trump’s focus on working-class voters is not accidental.

Now imagine what would have happened if Trump had looked at conservative and Republican voters and the ideas, platforms, and goals that have motivated them across the country — in races from the local to the national — over the past several decades, with an eye toward making himself minimally acceptable to most conservatives. Imagine that he had sat down with major GOP foreign-policy hands, whether or not he agreed with them, and spent time studying up on national-security issues. Imagine if he had spent even a few days looking into the constitutional issues of great import to conservatives, and had hired some responsible people to develop a message about the federal judiciary. Imagine if he had informed himself about the Republican legislative proposals kicking around Capitol Hill, at least enough to identify a few he supported.

Then imagine a Trump campaign that was still the Trump campaign, but one that was harder for conservatives to dismiss. So “yes” to the trade demagoguery, the Mexican border wall, the insults at rivals, the trucker hats, the bashing of entitlement reform, and a lot of the Trumpian theatrics. But alongside the sizzle, some steak as well: concrete and consistent pledges to work with conservatives on key issues, seriousness on foreign affairs, a health-care plan he could describe in more detail than just “lines around the states,” and a sustained effort to convince voters that he was genuinely converted to advancing the pro-life cause and overturning Roe v. Wade. And just as important, no unforced errors: No defending Planned Parenthood and promising not to overturn the abortion laws, no praising single-payer health care and Obamacare mandates, no throwing his own tax-cut plan under the bus, no blaming George Bush for 9/11.

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Source: Dan McLaughlin, nationalreview.com