1. Anti-Trump Republicans have little to offer the American people.

The Republican Party has not always been a vehicle for doctrinaire classical liberalism—think of the universal basic income scheme devised by Moynihan for the Nixon administration—and it is a mistake to think that, for example, Reagan owed his success to ideas, which very few people care about. Voters liked him because has was charming, exuded competence, and made jokes about “the government” that were the equivalent of workaday grumbling about the DMV. My great hope for 2016 was that someone—Scott Walker or Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio—would abandon fusionist orthodoxy in favor of a pro-family reformist platform. I remain convinced that a Republican candidate who announced a generous fully refundable child tax credit could have won the White House this year. For two election cycles in a row generic talk about “entrepreneurship” and marginal tax cuts has bored the voters whom it has not alienated. If I were a campaign strategy man I would have been circulating memos all last year with lists of proscribed words: “small business,” “opportunity,” and “new technology” would have been near the top. Both factions in this #NeverTrump coalition, the so-called “Establishment” and the radical Tea Party types, either fail to understand why voters are not warming to their message or don’t care, something that was illustrated with cringe-inducing vividness at the debate in Detroit when Ted Cruz, asked how he would bring jobs back to the city, said that he would repeal Obamacare.