“Republicans of all stripes must be made to acknowledge and accept that Trumpism is an experiment that failed,” Noah Rothman wrote in Commentary.

It was October 2016 and Rothman was declaring the terms on which Never Trumpers would accept the surrender of Republicans after Trump’s defeat. Some “examples must be made”, but after some political purges, the GOP could be reunited around “free trade” and “an internationalist foreign policy”.

But instead of losing, Trump won. The disasters that Rothman was predicting, the loss of Congress and the White House, never came about. And the scorned prophets of Never Trump, instead of apologizing or being offered terms for rejoining the GOP, continued forecasting disaster and doom for the heretics.

Like Democrats, Never Trumpers were still stuck on an election that Trump wasn’t supposed to win. Democrats had predicted a Hillary victory and Never Trumpers predicted a Republican disaster. Both Democrats and Never Trumpers want to reverse the results of the election. The Democrats invent vast conspiracies and the Never Trumpers predict disasters that will never happen.

Never Trumpers are obsessed with proving to Republicans that electing Trump was a disastrous mistake.