I don’t totally understand the take here. A lot of these ‘Reasonable Conservatives’ mentioned in this piece have made comments/taken stances that most ‘Liberals’ would (hopefully) find abhorrent. Its not hard or brave to call Trump a monster. He’s vile. But Trump is just a bombastic and censor-free cartoon of the Republican Party’s most disgusting characteristics. As long as ‘Reasonable Conservatives’ code their misogyny and racism, it’s ok? We are very quickly, and dangerously, rewriting the history of the Republican party — how many times I’ve seen Democrats and Republicans admonish Trump for “being no Reagan, sir!” Reagan was a complete monster, not the transformative political ideal. It’s pretty rich to hear Lavin call Trump a bigot and a bully, when Reagan himself stoked racial fears and played into Jim Crowe fantasies in the South. How have we forgotten Neshoba Fair and his Welfare Queens? Trump isn’t remaking the Republican Party — he’s simply raising it to its natural, garish conclusion.

And what does this make the Democrats? If ‘Reasonable Conservatives’ are flocking to Clinton, what candidate does that make her? Center-right? You quoted Max Boot, who recently endorsed Clinton. He was a chief architect of the Iraq War and has called for the deaths of millions of Syrians, openly. What does his endorsement mean? What does it mean that he won’t endorse Trump? Eight years ago, Obama ran on a platform of shutting down Guantanamo, and vowing to end the wars in the Middle East (reminder: neither of those things happened). Now the Democratic candidate is openly courting Kissinger’s endorsement and the media is applauding the brave neo-cons flocking to vote for her. It would be nice to look at not just the implosion of the Republicans, but the remaking of the Democrats as well.