This is insightful writing. I will get blow-back for writing this, no matter how much I try to qualify it, but SOME, certainly NOT ALL, of the #NeverTrump crowd are active Hillary supporters for various reasons.
There are paid Hillary people who pose as NeverTrump.
There are some NeverTrump people who want to 'punish' the Trump supporters.
There are some NeverTrump people who want Hillary to win to prove they were right when they kept saying Trump is unelectable.
There are more reasons than just these, but yes, there are so called Republicans who want Hillary to be elected for whatever personal reasons they may have. As such, they are fundamentally incapable of acknowledging anything good about Trump at all, under any circumstance.
It is no secret that the Hillary campaign is involving itself in the NeverTrump movement as much as they possibly can. Trump could jump in a river and save a drowning baby and the first thing many NeverTrumpers would say is, 'So what? He only did it for pubicity!' There is no getting through to this kind of person.
You're going to love the first part of my answer....
I flip-flip on whether to vote for Trump about as often as he does in policies.
(Told ya you'd like that).
I can't speak for all of the #NeverTrump crowd, but I can tell you that I have been staunchly #NeverHillary (or Bill) since they first came on the national scene in 1992.
How Bill made through the primaries still surprises me, as much baggage as he carried, yet he did.
At the end of the day I will either vote for Trump, or only down ballot.
This speech, should he stay on this message until November, makes it more likely that I will vote for Trump to stop Clinton (after voting in two failed attempts to stop her husband), rather than pass.
But it isn't the Trump supporters that are stopping me, or making me hesitate, although they sometimes haven't made it any easier.
Not a case of sour grapes.
It is Trump himself, for the reason listed in my first sentence.
It's no more complicated than that.
Which Trump do we get? 1990's, 2012's, yesterdays, last week's?
I'd like a solid month of steadiness, at least.
Heck, I'd probably settle for a solid two weeks at this point.