Conservative efforts to portray Hillary Clinton as unusually nefarious have steered the GOP into political cul-de-sacs from Vince Foster to the Benghazi Committee. Republicans have built up such a vast anti-Clinton hate debt that they’ve become incapable of acknowledging that Clinton is a largely conventional, mainstream politician. Doing so, after all, would reveal the underlying fraud to their voters.

Donald Trump is changing all that. For the first time since Clinton was secretary of state, and members of both parties spoke of her admiringly, Republicans are once again able to praise her, or at least vouch for her competence. In fact, more and more Republicans with real clout in conservative politics are announcing they will support Clinton in November, to guard against Trump’s becoming president as a kind of side effect of Clinton derangement syndrome. At least 50 former defense and foreign policy aides recently signed a letter promising to oppose Trump, and leaked it to The New York Times.

Clinton and her campaign are welcoming these defectors. They’re encouraging disaffected conservatives of all stripes to set aside partisan and ideological allegiances and support her, if only for one election cycle. At the Democratic National Convention last month, she showcased a coalition that extends from Bernie Sanders to soldiers in Ronald Reagan’s much different revolution. Democrats warmly welcomed former Republican Michael Bloomberg, whom Clinton offered a highly publicized speaking slot, and her campaign has since rolled out statements of support from prominent neoconservatives and other Republican national security hands who believe Trump is unfit for the presidency. It is clear the Clinton brain trust views this groundswell as an unalloyed good.

Not everyone sees it that way, though. Many Democrats, and Sanders’s supporters in particular, are alarmed by Clinton’s solicitousness.

Grover Norquist should get President Clinton to change all those building names to Reagan; apparently he's a Dem icon now #DemsInPhilly — David Dayen (@ddayen) July 29, 2016

They argue, in effect, that by touting their support for her, Clinton is validating their failures and helping to furbish discredited conservative crusades, from Reaganomics to the invasion of Iraq. That it would be better if, like FDR, she welcomed their hatred, rather than their endorsements. As long as they’re in the tent, after all, they might regain influence over government power.

