Why Do Some Liberals Go Gaga Over So-Called Non-MAGA Republicans?

Utah Governor Spencer Cox is frequently lifted up as the kind of non-MAGA Republican that America desperately needs. So New York Times columnist Ezra Klein had the governor on his podcast last September, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro did a series of joint interviews with him last fall, and the Harvard Kennedy School brought him to campus last week. He talks a good game about reducing partisan polarization and occasionally critiques Donald Trump.

It’s just talk though. Republicans in Utah’s state legislature, angry that the state’s Supreme Court has occasionally ruled against them, recently pushed through a bill that would add two justices to the court. They made disingenuous claims of making the court more efficient, but their intention is obviously to appoint two GOP loyalists and ensure the court never again rules against the legislature. Cox signed the court-packing into law last weekend without a word of complaint.

Liberals have spent the last decade desperately searching for “good” Republican politicians and lavishing praise on any GOP official such as Cox who shows even the slightest distance from the president. They should stop. It’s essential that liberals understand that non-MAGA Republican politicians’ loyalties are with the Republican Party and therefore ultimately Trump and MAGA. Non-MAGA Republican politicians can’t be trusted to defend democratic values, and no strategy for defending democracy in the United States can rely on them.

Let me define my terms here. Fully anti-Trump, anti-MAGA Republicans/ex-Republicans are people who have fully denounced the current GOP and endorsed Democratic candidates in recent presidential elections. Their ranks include former party Chair Michael Steele, onetime GOP staffers Bill Kristol and Nicolle Wallace, journalist Jennifer Rubin, ex-Representative Adam Kinzinger, and numerous others. They are critical to defending American democracy. Anti-Trump Republicans have helped persuade many journalists, business and civic leaders, and ultimately voters that Trump is a distinct threat to the country and a serious break with the conservatism of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

Non-MAGA Republican politicians are those who have been endlessly profiled and featured by the media over the last decade because they have made a few anti-Trump votes or statements but haven’t fully denounced Trump and embraced Democratic candidates. My informal list includes former Senators Bob Corker and Mitt Romney; ex-Representative Will Hurd; current Senators Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski; Justices John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett; and Governor Cox.

Some of these Republicans, such as Barrett, Collins, and Murkowski, have not personally leaned into casting themselves as non-MAGA Republicans. The media has elevated them. But others have consciously portrayed themselves as unaligned and even hostile to Trump. Remember when Roberts sanctimoniously declared, “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges” after the president criticized court rulings against him? Barrett memorably declared that the high court was “not a bunch of partisan hacks” (while sharing a stage with Mitch McConnell!). Romney did numerous interviews when he was in the Senate praising himself for not backing Trump as often as his colleagues. Cox knows that The New York Times and Harvard are very influential institutions on the left and seems eager to be portrayed by Democrats as smart and reasonable.

I call bullshit. When histories are written of Trump’s two terms in office, they will show that, an occasional vote or statement aside, the non-MAGA Republicans weren’t that different from the proudly MAGA Republicans they served with. Cassidy, Collins, Murkowski, and Romney provided key votes for federal judges who have rewritten the law to defend whatever radical actions Trump takes and for Cabinet officers like Kristi Noem who are manifestly unqualified for their jobs and have performed them terribly. Roberts, Barrett, and Kavanaugh have joined Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who are perceived to be more pro-Trump, in numerous rulings that have defended Trump’s wild abuses of executive power. Roberts authored perhaps the worst opinion of the Trump era, the 2024 Trump v. United States decision that essentially declared that presidents can do anything while in office and not later be prosecuted for it.

The Times published a story this week showing that the chief justice has started requesting that court employees sign nondisclosure agreements. Why? Because behind-the-scenes reporting on the high court is demonstrating that, Roberts’s pleas of innocence aside, it is full of Republican-aligned justices maneuvering to defend Republicans and Trump whenever possible. Sadly, Roberts is trying to limit reporting on his and his colleagues’ partisanship, instead of limiting the real problem—their excessive partisanship.

Cox presents himself as different from hyperpartisan GOP governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis or Texas’s Greg Abbott. But adding state Supreme Court justices because you are mad that the current court has ruled against you is exactly the kind of move that DeSantis and Abbott are known for. Republicans in Utah are frustrated because the state’s Supreme Court keeps putting barriers on their attempts to gerrymander Utah’s congressional districts. This is payback. It’s not as if the Utah Supreme Court is some liberal bastion. All five current justices were appointed by Republican governors, including three by Cox himself. And the governor signed this legislation two days after he was at Harvard puffing out his chest for rising above partisanship.

Cox has also signed anti-trans legislation and provisions limiting diversity and equity policies on Utah college campuses. He is fully on board, not just with the anti-tax policies of old-style Republicans like Romney and Bush but with the obsessions of MAGA.

So if non-MAGA Republicans are ultimately just polite MAGA Republicans, why do liberals spend so much time courting and praising them? For people like Shapiro and Klein and institutions such as the Kennedy School, presenting themselves as open to Republicans and not super-partisan is part of their brand. They are always looking for “reasonable” Republicans to align with or feature.

But I will admit falling into the trap of praising non-MAGA Republicans myself. Barrett ruled against the GOP’s position in a few cases in late 2024 and early 2025, and I wrote a piece excitedly hoping that she would be a bulwark against Trump. That of course didn’t pan out, and I probably shouldn’t have thought for even a second that it would. I (and I suspect many other liberals) still on some level think that the anti-MAGA Republicans will get up one day and fully join the resistance. After all, their words and deeds suggest they understand how radical Trump is and disagree with him much more than very MAGA figures like DeSantis do.

The problem, of course, is that MAGA and Trump have fully taken over the Republican Party. So on any policy issue, it’s ultimately the Democratic position versus the MAGA one. There’s no middle ground. Republican politicians like Cox who want to remain in good standing in the party end up taking MAGA positions. Justices like Barrett and Roberts might dislike Trump but seem to really fear being cast as conservative traitors in the mold of David Souter and Sandra O’Connor, who were appointed by GOP presidents but often ruled against right-wing causes while on the bench.

So Spencer Cox isn’t uniquely bad. But he’s bad. He and other non-MAGA Republicans can’t be trusted to defend democratic values or hold Trump in check. We’ve had 10 years of these people faking opposition to Trump and MAGA before ultimately falling in line. We liberals need to stop falling for it.