Who do you want on your side when Trump is gone?

If you want to win, you need allies. And if you want to survive losses, you need friends. You always will.

And yet, if you look around at how a lot of people in conservative media and activism are treating each other these days — in print and digital media, on radio and TV, and especially on Twitter — you’d think that the only issue that really matters is who can read whom out of the movement. Many of the more bellicose pro-Trump voices seem obsessed to the point of monomania with “Never Trumpers” and “globalists” and “neocons” and whoever else seems insufficiently committed to the Trump narrative of the day, even for the offense of not wanting to do a complete 180 on whatever things their targets have publicly professed over a period of decades. On the other side, too many of the longstanding members of the Right who took a principled stand as Never Trump conservatives in 2016 seem to have dug themselves deep into rhetorical bunkers in which all they ever do is lob grenades at their old comrades and dump on Republican politicians for trying to win elections and advance conservative policy.

Each side seems obsessed in particular with questioning the motives and sincerity of the other, positing conspiracies in which nothing people say is what meets the eye, and painting with the broadest of brushes in the kinds of terms that political writers typically reserve for their ideological opponents. “Who funds you?” is a vastly overused trope as a substitute for argument, especially when directed at people who are writing things consistent with their longstanding views, such as conservatives who are arguing against government interventions in the market or criticizing left-wing suppression of speech.