Disloyal Opposition: How the NeverTrump Right TriedAnd FailedTo Take Down the President

(Hardback)

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The election of Donald Trump in 2016 didn't just shock the country, it rattled the Republican Party and forced an overdue reckoning between rank-and-file Republicans and party leadership. Stung by his ascendancy as Republican voters rejected one establishment candidate after another during the presidential primaries, conservative leaders banded together to form what is known as "NeverTrump." This cabal of self-proclaimed conservatives included prominent lawmakers; top conservative publications, their editors and writers; and Republican donors and activists.
After failing to defeat Trump in November 2016, NeverTrump became part of #TheResistance, primarily organized by the Left, to sabotage Trump's presidency. The very same people who had used the Republican Party as their vehicle for power, fame, and influence were actively working to destroy the party's leader and punish Trump-supporting Republicans in Washington. At the same time, they became what they professed to despise about Donald Trump: petty, vengeful, bombastic, reactionary, and impulsive. And it's unlikely that marquee names long associated with conservatism and the Republican Party will hold a place of influence in the GOP ever again.

Reviews

Disloyal Opposition is a deft expos of NeverTrump, a small group of former conservatives, nearly all of them occupying posts in Washington, who never came to terms with the election of Donald Trump and have spent the last three years working against everything they once believed. Julie Kelly names names in this rapid-fire account, describing how these formerly influential conservatives joined with Democrats and left-wing philanthropists in a campaign to bring down the most conservative president since Ronald Reagan.James Piereson, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and president of the William E. Simon Foundation

Julie Kelly offers a bombshell description of the descent of the so-called NeverTrump Republicans from initial opposition to Trump to bitter and often ugly derangementending, as she points out, in political irrelevance, echo-chamber banality, Beltway neuroticism, hypocritical renunciations of most of their own prior positions, useful idiocy in service to the billionaire Left, and careers reduced to Twitter obsessions. Throughout her entire jaccuse expos, Kelly names names and pulls no punches in a lively, carefully documented, and damning anatomy of one of the strangest cases of collective political suicide in modern memory.Victor Davis Hanson, the Hoover Institution, Stanford University

Rarely have dismalness of subject and liveliness of treatment come together in such a delightful way. Julie Kelly gives us a blow-by-blow treatment of the Washington Generals team bus catching fire, spinning out of control, and speeding off a cliff. The spectacle is horrible, yet you cant help feeling that the people on board deserved it.Michael Anton, lecturer and research fellow, Hillsdale College

Its no surprise the Left wants to destroy President Trump. But some people who call themselves Conservatives have the same objective. Find out who they are and what theyve done by reading Julie Kellys Disloyal Opposition. President Trump broke the establishment, including fake Conservatives like Bill Kristol. Julie Kellys Disloyal Opposition is essential reading for all who believe in Making America Great Again.Sebastian Gorka, host of America First and former strategist to President Trump

Julie Kelly shows how many Republican publicists have masqueraded their growing identity with Americas leftist ruling class by pretending mere opposition to Donald Trumps peculiarities. Disloyal Opposition performs a valuable service by demonstrating that the Never Trump movement opposes not one man, but rather the American peoples priorities - in short, that politics has consequences. --Angelo M. Codevilla, professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University

Author Bio

Julie Kelly is a former political consultant in suburban Chicago and a stay-at-home mom. She is a senior contributor to American Greatness. Her past work can be found at the Federalist, National Review, the Hill, and the Wall Street Journal. Kelly wrote about food policy, agriculture, and climate change before covering politics in the Trump era. She lives in Orland Park, Illinois, with her husband and two daughters.