You have to hand it to the Never Trumpers. What they lack in common sense and human decency they more than make up for with tenacity. Despite a humiliation only weeks ago when every one of their anti-Trump third party choices said no and a big Washington Post story led to even Mitt Romney crawling off with his tail between his legs, influential media figure William Kristol is now claiming that they have found their candidate. According to Kristol it is an “impressive one” and indicated that the announcement would be coming during the holiday weekend.

As reported by the Washington Examiner “Kristol: Independent candidate will challenge Trump and Clinton”:

A serious independent candidate will step up to challenge presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and likely Democratic standard-bearer Hillary Clinton, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol suggested on Sunday.

“Just a heads up over this holiday weekend: There will be an independent candidate — an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance,” Kristol said in a message on Twitter.

Kristol has been leading an effort to recruit an independent candidate to take on Clinton and Trump, who each have unusually high negative favorability ratings.

The Weekly Standard editor has been calling for another independent challenger to emerge in the presidential race for more than a month, speaking about it most notably with Mitt Romney; former Republican Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn; and Republican Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse. Over the past month, all three have ruled out running themselves but expressed support for someone else to make the move.

It was not clear from Kristol’s message whether the name of a candidate would be produced over the weekend or at an undisclosed date in the future. However, time for the purported candidate is already short. The deadline for making it on the November ballot in Texas passed on May 9. The next deadline is in North Carolina, where the candidate will need to provide about 90,000 signatures from supporters by June 9 in order to make it on the ballot.

As of Monday morning there has been no grand announcement from Kristol but Trump has seized on the occasion to mock the smirking little neocon via Twitter:

 

 

Kristol was also blasted by David Horowitz whose Breitbart column two weeks ago referring to the meddlesome little man as a “Renegade Jew” drew media cries of anti-Semitism without bothering to note that Horowitz himself is Jewish and has devoted his life to defending Israel and waging war against Radical Islam – the smear merchants are quick on the draw but their sloppiness always shows.

In a blistering rebuke to Kristol’s treasonous attempts to sink Trump entitled “Kristol’s Betrayal Gets Serious” the author writes:

Over the Memorial Day Weekend, Bill Kristol doubled down on his betrayal of this country with a pair of tweets:

“Just a heads up over this holiday weekend: There will be an independent candidate — an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance,” Kristol tweeted.

He also said, “Those accused of betraying GOP by opposing Trump can take heart from P. Henry 251 years ago today: ‘If this be treason, make the most of it!’”

This fatuous invocation of an American patriot to justify the betrayal typifies the arrogant disregard for political realities shared by all those involved in a defection that could produce even greater disasters than the Obama era’s 400,000 deaths by jihad and 20 million refugees across the Middle East.

This is a perfect instance of “Trump derangement syndrome,” the underlying animus that motivates Kristol and his destructive cohorts. Dismissing Trump as an ignoramus and a stunted twelve-year-old is the stuff of schoolyard put-downs, not a serious critique of someone with Trump’s considerable achievements. Yet this is typical of Trump’s diehard opponents on the right. Is Trump more unprepared than Barack Obama whose qualification for the presidency was a lifetime career as a left-wing agitator? And how did that work out? Despite the lacunae in his executive resume, Obama is now regarded as “one of the most consequential presidents in American history” by reasonably qualified experts.

Can Trump be reasonably criticized, and is he something of a loose cannon? Of course he can, and yes he is. But criticisms that focus exclusively on the candidate miss the larger reality of this election, which is not merely a contest between two candidates but a clash between two parties and constituencies with radically differing views of what this country is and should be about, and even more importantly about the threats we face and how to deal with them.

Horowitz closes with:

This is the issue that defines the coming election. A party in denial about the Muslim holy war against America and its allies, whose basic instinct is to weaken America’s defenses and enable her enemies, is opposed by a party that wants to rebuild America’s strength, secure our borders, and put the safety of our people first.

The Kristol attack on the Republican Party and its presumptive candidate Donald Trump is an attack on all Americans and needs to be seen in that light.

With many neocons such as Robert Kagan already on record as saying that they would jump ship from the GOP altogether and throw in with Hillary it’s clear that Kristol’s mission is akin to burning the oil fields and destroying any chances of both Trump and the rapidly expanding Republican party that thanks to voters attracted to the Donald’s “America First” message are fleeing the Democrats in droves. Hobbling the opposition to Hillary would be a feather in Kristol’s cap and he won’t stop until he trots out his saboteurs to help put her into the White House.