The Trump era is scrambling traditional partisan loyalties, sometimes to disorienting effect for leading thinkers on the right. The Never Trump faction of the Republican Party has been a political failure, in that it was unable to stop Donald Trump’s election, but remains a lively intellectual force. Some of the harshest criticism of the Republican president has come from mainstream conservative columnists like Max Boot, Jennifer Rubin, and George Will, and in respected conservative journals like National Review, Commentary, and The Weekly Standard. Bill Kristol, the scion of neoconservatism and a majordomo of the GOP establishment, tweeted last week:

The GOP tax bill's bringing out my inner socialist. The sex scandals are bringing out my inner feminist. Donald Trump and Roy Moore are bringing out my inner liberal.

WHAT IS HAPPENING? — Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) November 21, 2017

To some centrists and liberals, Kristol’s ideological crisis presents a political opportunity. If many erstwhile conservatives are opposed to Trump, why not form a broad anti-Trump coalition that crosses old party lines? Benjamin Wittes, a fellow at the Brookings Institute with impeccable centrist credentials, on Sunday tweeted a manifesto calling for exactly that:



Statement of Principles of the #CoalitionOfAllDemocraticForces of the United States of America: A political manifesto in eighteen tweets. /1/ — Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) November 26, 2017

“We have grave disagreements about social issues, about important foreign policy questions, about tax policy, about whether entitlements should be reformed or expanded, about what sort of judges should serve on our courts,” Wittes wrote. “#IBelieve in putting them all aside. #IBelieve in a temporary truce on all such questions, an agreement to maintain the status quo on major areas of policy dispute while Americans of good faith collectively band together to face a national emergency. #IBelieve that facing that national emergency requires unity.”

#IBelieve in preserving a country, and in fighting to preserve a country, in which we can disagree about the many important issues that divide us. /18/ — Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) November 26, 2017

At least a few liberals are on board. “Ben, where do I sign?” wrote The Daily Beast’s estimable liberal columnist, Michael Tomasky. He argued on Tuesday that an anti-Trump Popular Front “could be a powerful and influential thing if Wittes can get 20 or 30 or 50 prominent people on both sides to sign a statement of principles, and thousands or maybe tens of thousands of regular citizens to co-sign on Facebook.”

The basic principles of this coalition, as outlined by Tomasky, are hard to argue with: “Commitments to the First Amendment; to transparent government; to getting to the bottom of Russia; to science and evidence; to no Muslim-bashing, ‘full stop’; to fighting presidential abuse of power.” Such noble goals could only be opposed by the hopelessly sectarian, he suggests: