THE phrase “forlorn hope” entered English from Dutch and German in the 17th century. It referred to a suicide mission or, more often, the ambitious and condemned men chosen to execute it. The most celebrated British forlorn hope was a band of aristocrats and ne’er-do-wells sent to scale the walls of the Spanish city of Badajoz in 1812. They carried sacks of hay to cushion their leap into its defensive ditch. Many were blown up by French mines the moment they landed.

Never Trumpers, as President Donald Trump’s Republican critics are known, are the forlorn hope of American politics. Led by conservative pundits such as Max Boot, David Brooks, Bill Kristol, David Frum and George Will, they are few in number, gallantly in favour of things like free trade and fiscal discipline that Republicans used to care about, and probably doomed. Mr Trump’s hold over Republicans seems unbreakable. Almost 90% approve of his performance. “There is no Republican Party, there’s a Trump party,” says John Boehner, a former Republican congressional leader.

That conclusion, sharpened by the failure of elected Republicans to resist the president’s pandering to Vladimir Putin, has forced Never Trumpers to a moment of reckoning. Messrs Frum, Boot and Will urge conservatives to vote Democratic in the mid-terms. Mr Brooks and two Republican movers-and-shakers, Reed Galen and Juleanna Glover, are floating the idea of a new centrist party. A group part-founded by Mr Kristol, founder of the Weekly Standard, hopes to launch a primary challenge to Mr Trump. Among the more or less openly disaffected Republicans Mr Kristol is courting to lead the assault are Governor John Kasich of Ohio, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Mitt Romney and Nikki Haley, Mr Trump’s ambassador to the UN. If none will oblige, Mr Kristol suggests he might have a crack at it himself.

Defenders of Mr Trump’s citadel have greeted these plans with derision. Asked what she thought of Mr Kristol’s ambitions, Kellyanne Conway, a Trump spokeswoman, asked which country he hoped to lead. Setting aside the fact that her lawyer husband, George Conway, is a closet Never Trumper, this was understandable. Mr Kristol, a cerebral conservative, is not a serious candidate. Moreover, the notion of him challenging Mr Trump hints at the Never Trumpers’ main weakness: their reluctance to accept that his victory was a rebuke to the small-government creed they espouse. Then again, charging enemy cannon requires a degree of self-delusion about your prospects. It also requires grit, which Never Trumpers take from another source. Their main objection is not to the president’s protectionist, deficit-boosting policies, much as they hate them. It is to his divisive, destructive politics. Most would settle for dislodging Mr Trump even if they could not win back their party in the process.

That is a realistic hope. Mr Trump won the nomination with support from a minority of Republicans. He squeaked to power thanks to a late rally by suburbanites who disliked him less than Hillary Clinton. Yet instead of trying to expand his support, he speaks mainly to his fervent base, representing around half of Republican voters. The fact that most other Republicans say they approve of him reflects the hyper-partisan environment he has engendered. Mr Kristol believes a cogent case against Mr Trump from within his party could give those voters pause.

Many Republicans are already uneasy about the president’s record on certain issues, including Russia and trade. And those on Mr Kristol’s wish-list are well able to offer correctives to his bad policies. Mr Kasich might talk more about his record of expanding health care to poor Ohioans than he did during his presidential run in 2016. Mr Sasse has thought deeply about the effects of economic disruption on workers. Yet even if a Republican challenge to Mr Trump were articulated in policy terms, its focus would be on his behaviour. Do Republicans really want another four years of that? A large minority say they dislike his tweeting. That may reflect how they view his general unruliness.

There is little chance Mr Trump would lose in a primary. His hold on most Republican voters is too strong—though Mrs Haley, whom he might find hard to lambast, could make it interesting. But a serious challenge could damage his prospects in the general election, especially if the Democrats nominated a moderate alternative. It is striking how evasive conservative voters can sound when asked about their views on the president. They are for him, they say, because he is better than Mrs Clinton and appoints judges they like. But they could say that of almost any Republican. A stiff primary challenge might force them to contemplate some of the other stuff Mr Trump brings to the White House.

Wanted: top-notch cannon fodder

An irony of the argument that Never Trumpers are out of touch with their party is how little influence it ascribes to Mr Trump. The mismatch between the ruthless economics Republican leaders preached and the economic security their voters wanted predated him. His skill was to notice it. But he does have a hand in the rising ethno-nationalist tensions America is witnessing. A challenge that could offer Republicans the security they crave, without the race-baiting, would be invaluable. It could offer a template for post-Trump conservatism, whenever that might be possible. But will a high-class challenger step forward?

A prospect of glorious annihilation is not something many politicians find appealing. For that matter, “forlorn hope” sounds even worse in the original Dutch phrase, “verloren hoop”, which contains no reference to hope. (“Hoop”, correctly translated into English as “heap”, refers to a band of men.) Still, Mr Kristol says he is confident a champion will emerge while the role remains enticing. After 18 months of Mr Trump, the Republican Party is a dented but still powerful election-winning machine. After eight years of his leadership, who knows what it might look like?