That’s the judgment of a majority of Americans: Roughly 57 percent of those surveyed disapprove of Trump’s job performance as of December 26, 2017.

And that majority is substantively correct.

It isn’t that Trump has no accomplishments to his name, or that Republicans are obligated to ignore actions that they agree with because of the president’s flaws.

Ramesh Ponnuru sums up Trump’s policy record well by observing that “people who voted for Trump in November 2016 on the theory that he would deliver policies radically different from what other Republicans would do,” which is to say, many in his base, “should be disappointed,” whereas “those who voted for him because he would usually line up with conservatives and sign Republican bills, on the other hand, have reason to be pleased with his policy record.”

Of course, Trump has presided over many policy failures. Any president could pass a tax bill or confirm federal judges given a Senate and House that is controlled by their party. And Trump’s tax bill failed to simplify the system while his federal court appointments include embarrassingly unqualified choices. But even without those caveats to the two policy achievements that conservatives cite most often, there are sound reasons to justify opposition from Never Trumpers.

Some relate to incompetence, others to lack of transparency.

And the most important and damning traits that distinguish Trump from his predecessors are his willingness to stoke animus against minority groups for political gain; the energy he has given to white supremacists; the indiscipline of his public statements; the frequency with which he blatantly lies to the public; and the unsavory characters that he brought with him into the federal government—including Stephen Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Sebastian Gorka, for starters.

Only Never Trumpers can credibly claim to stand against the moral abominations that suffused Trump’s political rise and the first year of his presidency. They alone are conserving a faction on the right that stands against deplorability in the face of a president who remains a cruel, mendacious egomaniac. They alone can credibly claim to oppose racial demagoguery.

Insofar as most Republicans celebrate Trump as a success story, rather than repudiating him as an affront to basic standards of decency, they transgress against the Founding belief in the importance of character in leaders while disgracing themselves and doing shortsighted violence to the GOP’s long term prospects. To the question, “Did you oppose the man who repeatedly stoked hatred of us?” they will have to tell Hispanics, Muslims, and African Americans, “No.”

In fact, Pro-Trumpers are sullying the fiscally laissez faire party for a generation, a tragedy for those who believe in free-market economics and small government. Neither George W. Bush nor John McCain nor Mitt Romney deserved criticism they got from some quarters for alleged racial animus. But I don’t blame voters who are rooting for Republicans to be routed in Election 2018: The GOP no longer passes the threshold test of opposing open bigotry.