Never still means never for the collection of Republicans known as "Never Trump" because of their committed opposition to Donald Trump.

These Republicans, ranging from lawmakers, to intellectuals, to party insiders and strategists, remains firmly opposed to Trump, even as the GOP nominee has become more competitive with Hillary Clinton.

That opposition continues despite the fresh attention on the scandals hovering over the Democratic nominee's presidential candidacy, as well as fresh news about Clinton being diagnosed with pneumonia.

The illness forced Clinton off the campaign trail for at least a few days this week.

For "Never Trump" Republicans, opposition to their party's nominee has never been tied to his viability in the polls or their opinion of Clinton.

Many oppose Clinton just as staunchly as Trump and reject GOP critics who say they are enabling the Democrat because there are only two choices.

"Yes, I'm still 'NeverTrump,' and still not voting for Hillary, either," Republican operative Rory Cooper told the Washington Examiner on Monday. Cooper previously advised "#NeverTrump," a super PAC dedicated to defeating the New York businessman in the GOP primary.

"Sen. Lee has not endorsed Donald Trump, and has no plans to," added Conn Carroll, a spokesman for Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, a prominent conservative.

In August, Trump trailed Clinton significantly in public opinion polls — both nationally and in the swing states. Trump's string of gaffes and sharp rhetoric over the summer appears to have turned Arizona and Georgia, perennial red states, into battlegrounds.

But days of heavy reporting on Clinton's use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state, and her questionable interaction with her family charitable foundation during that same period, have allowed Trump to become more competitive.

The RealClearPolitics average stood at 3 percentage points; 2.2 percentage points in a four-way contest with third party candidates. Polling on the impact of Clinton's health, and her campaign's handling of the episode, was not yet available.

The race has closed partly because some rank-and-file Republican voters reluctant to back Trump might have softened in their opposition. In a CNN poll released just after Labor Day, Trump garnered 88 percent support from self-identified Republicans, a notable uptick.

Mark Levin, a conservative talk radio host who had been "Never Trump," announced last week that he planned to vote for the nominee after all.

"I'm going to wind up voting for Donald Trump on Election Day. I take no responsibility for the dumb things he says," Levin told his radio audience.

Still, neither the new information on Clinton's potential ethical misdeeds, nor Trump's improvement in the polls, are changing any minds among many others among the "Never Trump" crew.

"In the professional world and amongst conservative thinkers, no, there is no softening," said Rob Stutzman, a Republican operative in California. "I think we believe as much as ever before he's dangerous for the country. He is loathed."

They have explained — in interviews and published writings — that their opposition to Trump was never about comfort with Clinton, or Trump's narrow path to victory in the general election.

Rather, it's about Trump himself — the positions he's taken on issues and the way he's conducted himself on the trail.

Even if you account for Trump's slightly more disciplined campaign style recently, his renewed embrace of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin is just one of many examples that prove nothing that motivated their unequivocal opposition to him has changed.

Peter Wehner, a Republican commentator who served in the last three GOP administrations, published a piece in RealClearPolitics meant to explain his position to members of his party who view the nominee as the better choice against a particularly flawed Democrat.

The strongest case to make for conservatives supporting Donald Trump is a modest one. It goes like this: He is a deeply flawed man who is running against someone who is even more deeply flawed," Wehner writes.

But, he adds upon conluding is essay: "The Trump oeuvre – what he has said, and done, and shown over the course of his life and this campaign — leads to an unfortunate but inescapable conclusion: Donald J. Trump is manifestly unfit to be president of the United States."