There are not that many Never Trumpers anymore, though the media (and the remnant Never Trumpers) try to fool you into thinking so. The honest Never Trumpers, the ones who thought that this orange New York real estate developer with the succession of hot wives was not a real conservative and would betray us the first chance he got, have evolved. It turns out that Donald Trump is the most consistently and effectively conservative president since Reagan. The Never Trumpers who weren’t in on the scam noticed his track record of conservative success and morphed.

Some became actively pro-Trump. I fit in there, as the first chapter of my book Militant Normals describes. Now, I was anti-Trump, not Never Trump, since I was already Never Jeb! and Never Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit and you can only have so many nevers in your life. Trump earned my support with his consistent and remarkable conservative achievements, so he got it. I am now an advocate, highlighting his successes, much as I do as a lawyer for clients. There are plenty of folks ready to highlight his missteps, and I seek his success.

Others are still freaked out about his pugnacious, allegedly unseemly manner (which I and others consider a strong plus), and they became merely Trump Neutral. Many of them fret about his mean tweets and wish he had the quiet dignity that the rest of us associate with failures like George W. Bush – you know, the kind of Republicans Democrats love in retrospect. These are the folks who “call balls and strikes,” criticize him where they oppose him and support him (sometimes grudgingly) when he does something they like. Fair enough – you have to follow your principles, assuming you have any.

Which brings us to the cruise-shilling hacks of Conservative, Inc., who are still ticked off that this guy came along and threw a handful of sand into the gears of the grand donor grift they had been running for three decades.

The Fredocons needed someplace to go, the Michael Corleones of conservatism having kicked them out of the family following their betrayal. The Never Trumpers, who have now gathered on deck at whatever sad website The Bulwark is after having gathered on the deck of the recently-sunk Weekly Standard, crave attention. That’s why whoever Charlie Sykes is – he edits The Bulwark and tweets about how conservatives have disappointed him – decided to send a leftist abortion activist to CPAC as the site’s correspondent so she could give what-for to those icky pro-life people who are trying to stop the Democrat infanticide push. But hey, when some liberal billionaire is bankrolling your Trojan horse conservative outlet, you need to walk a fine line between trying to look enough like a horse to get inside the gates but still be enough like a donkey so your benefactor keeps writing you checks.