The 25 Best Never Trump Conservatives to Follow on Twitter

By Jacob Weindling  |  March 30, 2017 | 6:18pm
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The 25 Best Never Trump Conservatives to Follow on Twitter

It’s no secret that Paste has a decidedly liberal slant, so I figured that compiling a resource to find principled conservatives would be a worthwhile endeavor to our readers. Many of you will no doubt disagree with most of the people below on a wide range of issues, but there is one that we can all agree on: Donald Trump is a national embarrassment.

America is horribly divided, and there has been an impulse since the election to completely abandon the other side of the political divide and retreat to our corners. This is a recipe for not just a two-term Trump administration, but one to create a legacy of mini-Trumps. You can wholeheartedly disagree with someone and still respect the ideological ground they stand on, and the 25 below conservatives are consistent in their conservatism. There are plenty of reasons to follow these accounts, and if you’re looking for allies in this battle against Trumpism, citing their arguments can only help your credibility—and who knows—you may even learn something new along the way.

Stuart Stevens

Stevens was Mitt Romney’s top strategist for his 2012 presidential campaign, and he takes that expertise to calmly explain how Trump is slowly killing the Republican Party.

He’s also pretty funny.

Leon Wolf

Wolf is the managing editor of TheBlaze—a conservative site that is not solely defined by the rants of the recently fired Tomi Lahren. He is a capital C conservative who regularly tweetstorms about how horrified he is that a fraud like Trump has come to represent his brand.

Those of us who enjoy steaks that taste like, well…steaks, have an ally in Wolf.

Avi Woolf

Woolf is the editor of Mida, a politically conservative Israeli website. He tweets a lot about middle eastern politics and history, but still makes plenty of room to excoriate the Trump movement and its enablers.

Tom Nichols

Nichols is a professor at the Naval War College and the Harvard Extension School. He recently wrote a book called The Death of Expertise, and has no patience for people who think that having a rudimentary grasp of how to Google things puts them on the level of experts like himself, who have spent a lifetime devouring knowledge.

He’s also an expert on Russia, and smells a rat when it comes to the Kremlin’s relationship with Trump.

Josh Jordan

Jordan crunches numbers for politics and has written at outlets like Forbes, The National Review and Real Clear Politics. He is a gif and video enthusiast, as exemplified by this nearly perfect tweet.

His gif game is on point.

Ramesh Ponnuru

Ponnuru writes at National Review Online and Bloomberg, and he is the definition of a policy wonk. A lot of his tweets will either help you learn something new or go completely over your head. He doesn’t tweet derisively about Trump too much, but when he does, they cut right to the bone.

Justin Amash

Amash represents the third district of Michigan in the House of Representatives, and is one of the few members of Congress you can actually describe as honest and forthright. He explains every vote on his Facebook page, and has no problem lighting Trump up on Twitter.

Charles C. W. Cooke

Cooke is the editor of National Review Online, and he defines himself as a “classical liberal.” He is very focused on policy, and is willing to give Trump credit when he thinks he is in the right.

However, he finds Trump to be in the wrong far more often.

Daniel Foster

Foster is a contributing editor at the National Review Online, and his dry sense of humor is a good counter to the stream of nonsense emanating from Trumplandia.

Stephen Hayes

Hayes is the Editor-in-Chief of The Weekly Standard, and a fierce critic of hypocrisy, which inherently places him opposite to the disorganized mess that is Trumpsim.

He also raises good points about media hypocrisy, which you will notice is a running theme on this list.

Rich Lowry

Lowry is the editor of National Review, and he is a terrific resource to liberals trying to understand how Trump happened.

But he still seems as confused about some of this stuff as the rest of us are.

Dan McLaughlin

The self-professed “baseballcrank” is sure to ruffle a liberal’s feathers on a consistent basis, as a lawyer who writes for National Review Online and formerly of RedState speaks his mind on a range of issues. However, there is one common ground the far left can find with him.

Like many others on this list, he does a good job of reminding us that despite our derision, Trump still does have a tremendous amount of power that a lot of people don’t quite understand.

Tim Miller

Miller is not your typical Republican, despite the fact that he worked for a classic Republican’s campaign (Jeb!). He’s written about Chance the Rapper at The Federalist, and even penned a few anti-Trump columns during the election at exiled former ESPNer, Bill Simmons’ site, The Ringer.

Ana Navarro

This ABC, CNN and Telemundo contributor hits Trump on the daily, and she is an absolute must-follow for anyone who wants to gorge themselves on Trump jokes.

Rick Wilson

Wilson is a Republican consultant and media strategist who writes in The Daily Beast, Politico and The New York Daily News, among a few others. Like many on this list, he feels as if much of conservatism left him behind, and is on a mission to return it to those who are principled enough not to sell their soul to a hate-filled, mutated Dorito.

Ken White

I’ll be honest, this is the first time I’ve discovered his name, as I have only known him by his notorious handle: Popehat. Popehat is actually a blog made up of eight different writers, but Ken White tweets from their main account, and he regularly makes me laugh out loud with non-Trump takes.

But he still saves plenty of good stuff for our commander-in-tweet.

Emily Zanotti

Zanotti writes for HeatStreet and is another good follow for things other than politics.

But there is still plenty of humor left over for Trumpistan.

This piece of advice is something we all should take to heart.

Mary Katharine Ham

Ham writes at The Federalist and appears regularly on CNN. She also co-moderated a GOP primary debate. She dispenses valuable knowledge and gives zero fucks about stepping on your feelings to make a point.

She is the conservative mom that hyperventilating liberals need right now.

Ben Sasse

If I had to bet on who will be our next Republican president, I would put my money on the Senator from Nebraska. He’s genuinely funny, affable, and if he is an ideologue, he sure does a good job of hiding it. Plus, he avoided this Trump nonsense from the very start.

Since the election, he doesn’t really tweet about Trump very much, but he was surprisingly candid for a sitting Senator during the campaign.

Since the inauguration, the best we’ll get out of him is a subtweet of the president.

Seriously, where can I bet on his presidential odds? I don’t care what they are, this is happening. Please, someone take my money.

Ben Howe

The contributing editor to RedState spends many of his days beefing with fellow “conservatives” who call him a traitor to the cause for not supporting a man who identified as a liberal at various points in his life. He minces no words in his hatred for this orange ball of crazy that hijacked a good portion of what used to be known as the conservative movement.

Stephen Miller

The self-described “Publisher + Culture Vulture” at The Wilderness and contributor to HeatStreet has seemingly pissed everyone off on Twitter at some point, which shows that he’s doing something right. Since the election, he has spent much of his time on Twitter pointing out how hypocritical it is for the media to freak out over things Trump is doing when they barely cared about it when Obama did them.

As much as he delights in teasing liberals about their blind spots, he still hits conservatives for theirs as well.

He also does a good job pointing out the absurdity of the mainstream media.

Kilgore Trout

No, this isn’t their actual name, but their Twitter pseudonym is presumably named after the fictional character created by Kurt Vonnegut. Classified as a “sometimes writer” whose writings are difficult to find, I first discovered this account when many of the above conservatives continually retweeted them into my timeline, and was sold a couple days ago when they compared White House shill Devin Nunes to Uncle Jack from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Their pop-culture analogies are awesome.

Seth Mandel

Mandel is the Op-Ed editor of the New York Post and has remained #NeverTrump in the face of actual danger coming from this unhinged wing of the party.

That hasn’t stopped him from having fun with his opposition though.

At the end of the day, he is a sober conservative who helpfully reminds us how so much of the media has utterly corrupted itself, which helped create the conditions for Trump.

John Daly

A self-described “confidant of exiled conservatives,” Daly writes for BernardGoldberg.com, National Review Online and Paste. I recruited him to our media section because I felt that in order to credibly cover the media in the age of Trump, we needed to bring a conservative voice to help liberals understand how much of the media really does have a liberal slant. His article at Paste about the difference between the coverage of Tea Party protests and the Women’s March is one such example of this blind spot around the media that too many liberals have (myself once included). Like everyone else on this list, his tweets are a reminder of the one nice thing about Donald Trump: the dude has helped unite rational thinkers on all sides of the aisle.

Wu-Tang Financial

I would assume that they are named after the famed Chappelle Show skit, and if the name alone doesn’t sell you on giving them a follow, then you might want to check your funny bone. They’re goofy, but underlying its entire shtick is a serious fiscally conservative mindset. No one has more fun on Twitter than whomever runs this account.

Jacob Weindling is Paste’s business and media editor, as well as a staff writer for politics. Follow him on Twitter at @Jakeweindling.

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