It has been interesting watching the shifting sands of the Trump candidacy and administrations change individual conservatives positions on the man. Recently I have been thinking that it bears a resemblance to the Kubler-Ross model of grief.

First Stage: Denial. This stage occurred during the primary. Trump was rejected as a serious candidate, not worthy of any consideration for his positions, such as they were, or his wild statements,

Second Stage: Anger. Once it became clear that Trump was not going away I watched a lot of anger over his run for the presidency. Usually this anger was directed at those deemed responsible for his continual presence, the Media for making him relevant, various other candidates for not stopping him and so on. Interestingly it rarely blamed the voters, that is the base of the GOP remained clean and pure even as they selected the narcissistic man-baby as their standard bearer.

Denial: Oh yeah there was a lot of denial going on. Denial that Trump cold get the nomination and denial of support should he get it. Denial didn’t endure.

Bargaining: Look, Trump won and for a lot of conservatives this started the bargaining phase. Trump may be a lying, self-centered, grifter, but damn it he is not Hillary Clinton and he’ll sign those wonderful, wonderful GOP bills into laws. Yeah we’ll have to turn a blind eye to he and his kids looting the Republic, but he’s not really that bad.

Acceptance/Full Support: That brings us the final stage. Bargaining gives way to Full Support as the intensity of attack on Trump and his corruption escalates. The very nature of partisan gravity in our bi-polar political system means you are either against Trump, and therefore aligned with Liberals or you stand shoulder to shoulder with Trump and your fellow party-members. No enemies to the right! This is the inevitable terminus of this process. Those who cried ‘Never Trump!’ and ‘I’ll vote Third Party’ will be vocal supporters of his re-election for the far less terrible fate then being called a liberal by those you would have to leave behind.

You can paraphrase Michael From The Godfather all you want, “That’s my party, it’s not me,” but we all know where Michael ended up.