WASHINGTON, D.C. — Shortly after Mitt Romney lost the 2012 general election, the Republican National Committee released an autopsy report urging the party to bring back voters traditionally in line with Republican values. The report called on GOP members to embrace Latinos, minorities, and other people who have historically had their voices suppressed. But in 2016, the party nominated Donald Trump as its Republican presidential candidate, a man who has been openly hostile towards immigrants, women, Muslims, Latinos, blacks, among other groups.
The nomination sorely disappointed many Republican voters who refused to vote for him, believing that he does not represent the party well. On election night, roughly 150 #NeverTrump supporters crowded Lincoln, a busy downtown restaurant in the nation’s capital, to watch the election together.
Under the heavy glow of multiple television screens blaring election results and against the backdrop of a life-size cut-out of Donald Trump, #NeverTrump supporters took to the open bar to order Moscow Mules as quickly as bartenders took away empty mason jars and mule mugs. The room hushed briefly when 9 p.m. polls rolled in. People broke out into cheers when a television host announced that Clinton had won New York and Illinois.
“That’s not surprising!” a jubilant man wearing a #NeverTrump pin shouted. “Keep it coming!”
The mood immediately turned sullen when the host announced that Trump won Texas, Kansas, Wyoming, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Arkansas.
Andrew Weinstein, CEO at Ridgeback Communications and the #NeverTrump party co-host, was in a good mood as polls rolled in, however. Weinstein, a lifelong Republican, openly endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton this year because he was appalled by Trump’s coarse rhetoric on women, immigrants, and other minorities.
“If you told me I would be voting for Hillary Clinton, I would have never believed you,” Weinstein told ThinkProgress. “You have two candidates for president — one of whom is qualified to be president and the other is unquestionably unqualified in every area. He doesn’t have the personality, the experience, the temperament, the knowledge to manage the world’s most powerful office.”
“Hillary can be a four-year migraine, but Trump is a cancer,” Weinstein added. “It’s a risk to our country and a risk to our system of government. If Trump wins, the party is dead. It may survive his four years of presidency, but I don’t think long term, the party can survive as a party of hatred and exclusion, and narrow-mindedness.”
Candi Skipper is also a #NeverTrump lifelong Republican voter, but she wrote in Evan McMullin — a moderate Republican alternative to Trump — when she cast her vote in Maryland.
“I can’t support Donald Trump and as a Republican with Republican values, I couldn’t support Hillary Clinton,” Skipper told ThinkProgress. “I made a conscience vote for Evan McMullin.”
“Why couldn’t I support Trump? Let me count the ways,” Skipper continued, swaying side to side to avoid the packed crowd. “He does not represent me as a woman — whenever he said he would grab women’s crotches and do things like that. Although I didn’t need him to say that to know that he’s a disgusting human being.”
“I don’t know that there’s a future for the Republican party,” Skipper said, explaining that it’s been difficult for her to get people to believe in traditional Republican values. “If [Trump] is the direction of the Republican party and if he does become elected, and he becomes the face of the Republican party, then I see myself resigning from the Republican party and going unaffiliated at this point because there aren’t any other options for conservatives.”
Republicans like Weinstein and Skipper aren’t alone in their #NeverTrump animus. On Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) hewed true to his promise that he would neither vote for Trump nor his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Instead, he announced that he had voted for McMullin.