Why We Talk So Much About Trump: It's Personal

Over the weekend, Kimberly Ross, writing at RedState, posted an excellent piece asking, “Why Do We Talk So Much About Trump?” I agree completely with all of her arguments, but I think there’s an even deeper reason for why many conservative members of #NeverTrump are so obsessed (for lack of a better word) with The Donald—it’s personal.

Hillary Clinton is a terrible, awful, no good, very bad candidate, and would be the same as President—but she’s a liberal Democrat who is running as the candidate of the Democratic Party. Trump, meanwhile, is a liberal who has taken over the Republican Party, making many of its leaders and members look like fools and hacks in the process. Based on past statements and evidence, he would pursue many of the same liberal policies as Clinton, but with the added detriment of giving them an air of conservative approval. I’ve written before about how Trump can be liberal, and yet give conservatism a bad name at the same time—it’s all about perception, and merely being the nominee of what was once America’s major conservative party will be enough for many voters to see Donald Trump as emblematic of conservatism.

The point is that Hillary Clinton is the terrible candidate of the other side, the sort of person Democrats nominate all the time. But, for many Republicans, it feels as if Trump and his followers stole the party out from under them, all while destroying some of the party’s brightest stars in the process. The fact that many of Trump’s primary wins were the result of Democrats and independents voting in Republican open primaries makes that perception even stronger.

This was our party, many conservatives think. And now this orange freak and his cultists have stolen it. For many who had (and still have) an emotional attachment to the Party of Reagan, that anger is hard to let go of, and is the reason many still can’t stop talking about (or raging about) Trump.