In addition to a resistance movement from the left that brought millions into the streets and motivated turnout in 2018 and 2020, some opposition to Donald J. Trump came from another political bloc. Despite high levels of partisan polarization and party unity in the United States, Trump was rejected from within the ranks of Republican partisans by the so-called Never Trumpers. But how consequential are their views and ideas, and what do they suggest about the American party system and other aspects of its polity?

This edited volume brings a number of lenses to bear on addressing the Never Trump phenomenon, starting with its location or absence in Congress, state and local settings, the media, think tanks, and GOP Establishment. Other chapters emphasize how Never Trumpism relates to Republicans’ domestic and foreign policy stances, the development of the party, and Republican positions on character and corruption. The Republican Resistance is a valuable work that chronicles the rise of Never Trumpism, the ways that some Republicans who initially rejected Trump as the GOP standard-bearer made at least an uneasy peace with him, and how certain aspects of the modern Republican party relate to candidate and President Trump and Trumpian populism.

Although there are numerous journalistic and scholarly studies of Trump voters, from the start, this work is clear that its emphasis is squarely on elites, not voters. These are the individuals who, from their perches in institutions and organizations, have long expressed rhetorical and policy commitments and so helped to define both the party and American conservatism. In its chapters on elites in political institutions, the book asks important questions about how the United States’s constitutional design operated when it was faced with a strong president who commanded his party apparatus and garnered intense loyalty from the party base while pushing the bounds of democratic governance.

For instance, Anthony Sparacino, in a chapter on states as possible “laboratories of resistance” (thereby modifying the phrase “laboratories of democracy” that Justice Louis Brandeis applied to states), discusses criticisms from Republican elected officials who were not in federal office. In particular, Republican governors in blue states were among those more critical of Trump and wary of his policies, including Trump’s approach to intergovernmental relations. An institutional feature—federalism—therefore provided a place from which some Republican resistance was mounted. With suburban voters trending away from the Republican party in the age of Trump, Sparacino suggests that “the decentralization of American party politics offers pathways for change within the party” (p. 59).

But not all institutional features operated as devised. After noting that “[O]pposition to Trump among House and Senate Republicans diminished quickly and is now functionally extinct” (p. 20), Jeffrey Lazarus argues that this “reflects a serious flaw in the federal government’s constitutional design” (p. 35) because Republican members of Congress did not fulfill their role to provide checks and balances. For Lazarus, the villain is the rise of strong political parties inasmuch as “linked electoral fate helps create national political parties” (p. 35).

Lazarus is right that partisanship in Congress outflanked the American institutional design crafted to—as Madison put it in Federalist 51—set ambition against ambition. However, this chapter does not consider the question of whether what unfolded during the Trump presidency and candidacies was a function of partisanship or, more specifically, Republican partisanship. As Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein have pointed out (see, for instance, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, 2016), partisan polarization has been asymmetric, with Republicans holding more extreme and illiberal positions than Democrats.

In focusing on elites, the book also raises questions about the place of ideas in American conservatism and the split between conservative voters and elites. As April A. Johnson and Karyn A. Amira observe, “[M]ost of the conservative journalists who continue to convey #NeverTrumpism hail from elite print publications and mainstream newspapers, outlets whose audiences do not generally reflect the populist masses” (p. 78). Perhaps the bastion of conservative thought most critical of Trump was composed of several think tanks, which, as Heather E. Yates discusses, were motivated by ideological, philosophical, and policy considerations. These “think tanks publicly opposed Donald Trump on the grounds that they believe he poses an existential threat to fundamental conservative principles, long-standing political norms, and American democracy itself” (p. 86).

Conservative public intellectuals in think tanks and certain conservative media were unlike Trump and his backers because they were not anti-immigrant or anti–free trade. Moreover, as the chapters by Jason S. Byers, Wesley B. Renfro, Robert (Bo) Wood, Christopher Paskewich, Martin Cohen, and Beth Rosenson point out to various degrees, Trump diverged most from purported conservative precepts on character and temperament, and foreign policy, with some breaks on domestic policy. Paskewich contends that Never Trumpers reject Trumpism’s undemocratic turn and pursue conservativism in a way that “respects the rule of law, preserves the Constitution, and maintains basic integrity,” turning away from a Trumpian Republican party that is “simply transactional” (p. 172).

Despite the book’s emphasis on elites, Republican voters are not absent from its analysis. Although the work does not feature survey research on such voters, numerous chapters point out that some Republican officeholders who backed Trump were at least partially motivated by the strong support for Trump from the GOP base because they were fearful of electoral repercussions in the medium and long terms.

Moreover, several authors note links between the Tea Party in the Obama years and the rise of Trump and Trumpism. This is a continuity pointed out by numerous other scholars, and it has been well supported by intensive interviews by Rachel M. Blum (How the Tea Party Captured the GOP: Insurgent Factions in American Politics, 2020).

However, perhaps because the focus is so squarely on a relatively brief period of time, there is little in the volume on broader historical shifts in party affiliations and, in particular, on the role of race in those transformations. Whether one looks to scholarly work in American political development or on elections, public opinion, and political behavior, we know that racial divides and attitudes about race have been a major driver of partisan shifts in the United States and have mattered a good deal for the rise of Trump. Moreover, although numerous chapters note that many Never Trumpers define themselves as Reagan Republicans, Reagan’s own practices and rhetoric are not examined. Instead, it is taken at face value that Trump and Trumpism repudiated Reagan’s legacies as a fiscal conservative, despite the reality that the federal deficit increased tremendously under both administrations. The contributors also do not note Reagan’s use of racially charged language regarding social welfare or his use of cultural appeals. More historical context would have added another dimension to this work’s focus on the place of Trump and Never Trump conservatives in the modern Republican party.

However, as a scholarly work that seeks to capture an ongoing story and deliver more than journalists’ first draft of history, this is certainly a worthwhile edited volume that helps us understand what has been happening in recent American politics.