According to a report in the DC Examiner, Never Trumpers are preparing to back Biden in an effort to defeat Trump in the general election:
Republicans opposed to President Trump are quietly preparing to support Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, backing that could materialize in the primary as he attempts to fend off a surging Elizabeth Warren.
Some Republican operatives active in Never Trump circles are discussing what form support for Biden might take and the timing. Groups such as Stand Up Republic, co-founded by prominent Never Trump Republicans Evan McMullin and Mindy Finn, could target disaffected GOP voters in key micro-battlegrounds with finely tailored advertising in a bid to boost Biden in the Democratic primary.
Biden, 76, is the most likely Democrat to receive measurable support from the Never Trump crowd, most of whom quickly concluded that the president does not face a realistic threat from the three Republicans challenging him in the GOP primary in 2020.
“Biden is probably the only plausible candidate the Never Trumpers could support,” said Jim Dornan, a Republican operative in Washington who maintains relationships with anti-Trump Republicans.
The idea that Never Trumpers would vote for Biden over Trump really says something ridiculous about them. I know Trump can be hard to take at times, but he governs from the right and at the end of the day that’s what matters.
What if Elizabeth Warren wins the primary?
Some Republicans in this community, who believe Warren’s policies are a different sort of extreme than Trump but equally dangerous to the country, might channel their opposition into helping one of the president’s long shot primary challengers or get behind an independent candidacy, should one develop. Other Never Trump Republicans insist that the label means exactly that.
“If it’s Elizabeth Warren, that presents a real problem because she may have a lot of plans, but most of them are terrible,” said Sarah Longwell, a veteran GOP operative and outspoken anti-Trump Republican. “Being Never Trump doesn’t mean abandoning conservative sensibilities,” she said.
“Never Trump means what it says: Never Trump. Under no circumstances can you embrace that man coming back to the White House,” countered Jerry Taylor, who runs the Niskanen Center, a centrist Washington think tank that has become a gathering spot for anti-Trump Republicans. “Most Never Trump Republicans that I traffic with are of the mind that any electoral outcome that doesn’t return Donald Trump to the White House is a good outcome, save for the wild card of Bernie Sanders.”
Elizabeth Warren is essentially the same as Bernie Sanders, at least from where I’m sitting. I don’t know how they could vote for her, or really any of them to be frank. The ones left are all running on a very radical socialist agenda.
I suspect what will actually happen is that enough disaffected Never Trumpers will try and run someone on the right as an independent candidate in the general so they won’t have to vote for any of these Democrats. I know they don’t like to hear it, but that would still be a vote for whichever Democrat wins the primary because there’s no way an Independent bid will win the presidency.
Via TRS
