That kind of internal coherence remains a historical anomaly and is unlikely to persist in either party. For the foreseeable future, the dominant faction of the GOP may be populist and nationalist. But the populists will not have the party all to themselves. They will be forced to share it with what we will call a liberal-conservative faction, in recognition of their grounding in classical liberal principles of pluralism, constitutionalism, and free trade. That faction, in other words, is the Never Trumpers and their fellow travelers: the educated middle class, business interests, and the more upwardly mobile parts of minority groups.

This wing of the party may be small, but it will enjoy some impressive advantages. It will find significant financial support in the technology and finance sectors and thus will have more than adequate resources to build institutions, fund candidates, and engage in intraparty warfare for control of state parties. Because it will be especially attractive to the kinds of experts and thinkers who played such a key role in the Never Trump movement, it will not lack for well-developed policies and philosophies. In the midst of a pandemic, expertise might even regain some of its appeal.

A Never Trump faction within the Republican Party might also benefit from a similar evolution within the Democratic Party. The Democrats are already seeing signs of factional division emerging in their ranks, as moderates do ideological battle with a left wing whose members openly call themselves socialists. The left wing of the party has quickly grown from a small band of disgruntled partisans to a powerful political force with its own think tanks and fundraising strategies, and a large membership organization, the Democratic Socialists of America, which has doubled in size over the past two years.

Notably, the parts of the country where populist Republicans are least competitive are also the parts where the left wing of the Democrats will be the strongest—possibly even dominant. That dominance would make the Democrats beatable, especially in state and local races, by liberal-conservative Republicans who embrace racial and ethnic diversity and are in favor of economic competition, market mechanisms to protect the environment, internationalism, and aggressive measures to fight poverty. The competitiveness of this part of the Republican Party in the bluer corners of the country can already be seen in the reelection of the popular Republican governors of Maryland and Massachusetts, who have embraced something like this liberal-conservative approach.

At the national level, a Congress with durable, organized factions would look far different from the one we’ve become accustomed to. For decades, we’ve seen the linked trends of homogenizing parties and growing polarization create one of the most toxic problems the nation faces: partisanship so paralyzing that it all but eliminates the possibility of compromise. Yet as the parties become less unified, legislators have an opening for a revival of bipartisanship. If these factions develop into genuinely distinctive, independent brands, they could become powerful enough that the majority faction is forced to negotiate with them. And on a host of key issues—national security, trade, and immigration, for example—the Democrats’ moderate wing and the Republicans’ liberal-conservative faction may find that they have more in common with each other than with other members of their respective parties. The more populist elements of both parties might find affinity on precisely the same issues.

Oxford University Press

Such cooperation can be seen as another legacy of the Never Trump movement, a natural outgrowth of the personal connections that many Never Trumpers forged with erstwhile political opponents who became allies in their resistance to the president. Kristol’s rehabilitated moral status among some progressives—once unthinkable—is a prominent example. The Republican and Democratic donors who now meet regularly with various centrist activists through a network called Patriots and Pragmatists is another. These ties will only become stronger as donors in both parties shift their support to their respective factions and away from the party as a whole. Billionaire donors such as Kathryn Murdoch and Seth Klarman are already starting to target their giving so as to build up political infrastructure for the parts of the major parties that are neither populist nor socialist.