Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites is a remarkable record of a particular strain of conservative who decided to abandon the party, even in the face of another Clinton in the White House. The reader is left with the question of whether this is just a record of a now dead civilization or something more than that—perhaps a prophecy about a path conservatism could still take. My money is on the archaeological record, but either way Robert Saldin and Steven Teles have given us a key to understanding factionalism on the political Right in America.

The book is structured around the different subcultures of Washington, DC, and—make no mistake—is about the inner lanes of the Washington beltway. So, the reader should understand at the outset that this is not an account of how average citizens around the country made up their minds about Trump; rather, it is a narrative account of how Never Trumpism bloomed, in varying degrees, around the Republican world in Washington, DC.

Despite these different subcultures, the stated reasons that conservatives proclaim in the interviews often boil down to the same two things: (1) mortification with Trump’s statements and policy positions and (2) deep misgivings about his fundamental character flaws. Because those two claims are everywhere in the book’s subject matter, there is a somewhat repetitive quality to them, but Saldin and Teles spin a great yarn about how the Never Trump faction reasoned their way to their positions, and thereby out of the good graces of the party at large.

Readers should understand that this book is not meant to be a careful measurement of attitudes or a parsimonious test of theory. Earlier I noted it was about the “inner lanes” of the beltway, but it would be more accurate to say that it is mostly about the corridor of Northwest Washington where the lobbyists, lawyers, foreign policy professionals, and think tank economists live (the exceptions are probably the campaign consultants who have to range a little farther out into the wilderness of America). But the limitation of being a narrative account in most respects also gives the book its power. Behind the narrative is the fact that Republicans are slowly realigning before our eyes, and Saldin and Teles are on site as a relatively small but important group of elite Republicans and conservatives gave up on the movement (temporarily?) because of Donald J. Trump.

Some of the authors’ most interesting and thoughtful work is their delineation of the inherent tensions between the business model of conservatism and the principles of the ideological movement. Indeed, they may make less of this distinction than they should, given what a powerful one it seems to be. Republican elites have split apart along an axis that is tied to those twin reasons: policy and character. Conservatives of the business-model variety have taken a position that they have to go along with policy failures and character flaws for the eventual good of the party, whereas those who care more about principles often found that they could not accommodate themselves to this state of affairs. And Saldin and Teles identify a host of interesting variables from religion to income to culture to explain the decisions of Never Trumpers, as well as those who could not quite join that category.

The obvious question that the book implicitly poses is whether this split in the movement is permanent. I tend to agree with Saldin and Teles when they write (p. 242) that more factionalism is likely to be the lot of Republicans in the future, although of course that is hard to know. There is a case to be made that this crackup of Republicans is just the first of a pair of breakups, as factionalism may well stalk the Democratic side of the aisle. Saldin and Teles may be well positioned to write a sequel of sorts about progressives someday.

There are, perhaps, too many empirical assertions floating around in this book that are difficult to justify. Many such statements come from conservatives who seem not to understand how this terrible thing could have happened (although, of course, political scientists would point to racism, populism, sexism, and other tendencies that Republicans should have seen lying around on the GOP ground for years). But some such assertions are claims from Saldin and Teles that might be hard to justify, given their strategy to focus on a record rather than a theory.

To give just one example, the claim that foreign policy experts may be the “purest strain” of Never Trumpism (p. 35) may be true, but it would probably take more careful measurement of the culture to justify that claim. Are foreign policy professionals purer than the consultants who took a deep pay cut or than the most vocal intellectuals who tried to run David French for president, an episode that Teles and Saldin explain with all of the hopelessness it deserves? It is hard to tell from the interviews.

Hovering in the background of this account is Hillary Clinton, and she may have deserved more treatment. It is difficult to tell whether Saldin and Teles simply chose to focus heavily on Trump or whether the Never Trumpers they interviewed were reluctant to speak directly about her. It seems quite plausible that Republican apostates were reluctant to speak about how they abandoned their tribe even as Republicans did battle with their ancient enemy, the Clintons. Still, all of the decisions made come in her shadow: she is as important to this story as Donald Trump himself. Would the band of rebels have been larger had the Democrats nominated Joe Biden or some other less despised figure? Would the arguments made by the Never Trumpers have been received more favorably if it was somebody else? It seems likely, but it may have been difficult to get Republicans to discuss this possibility. Consequently, Hillary Clinton comes up occasionally—particularly around the discussion of Evan McMullin and efforts to run a third-party candidate—but at least this reader was thirsty for a more complete account of the comparisons made between Clinton and Trump to explain people’s decisions.

I think it is possible that some empirically minded political scientists (the tribe I identify with) may skip this book, but that would be a mistake. Although this book is unlikely to become first-year graduate student fare, I have seen nothing that so clearly addresses the arguments made by conservatives who revolted against their party in 2016 and continued the revolt in many ways in 2020. Though this strand of Republicanism may be a dying civilization, it is still only “mostly dead.” I suspect it is likely to revive for a time as Republicans fight about the nomination in 2024. The “invisible primary” of 2024 will hinge on many of the arguments made by the Never Trumpers—and the kind of Republican who wins that fight will make for an interesting sequel to this book, whatever happens.