The shameful complicity of Republican leaders in President Trump’s torrent of deceit about our election tells us there is little hope for a more reasonable post-Trump GOP. But what about conservatism as a philosophy? Is it equally discredited?

Let’s begin by just saying it: The country owes the Never Trump conservatives a debt.

Yes, many progressives have been uneasy with these unusual allies. They insist that Trump was not some alien imposition on conservatism but rather the product of long-standing trends in Republican politics. Trafficking in racial division and racism, nativism, extremism, conspiracy theories and voter suppression did not start with Trump.

Progressives are entirely right about this. But the Never Trumpers deserve our respect precisely because so many of them stood against these tendencies and, in more cases than not, undertook a deeper critique of their own side......

Of course, I’d like the anti-Trump conservatives to admit the error of their ways and fully join my side of politics. But failing that, I still appreciate what they did. And I hope at least they can now champion a brand of conservatism that is about more than making the rich richer and the powerful more powerful.

Stoking fear of “socialism” is a familiar refrain from right-wing populists and wannabe authoritarians. It goes hand in hand with efforts to define who counts as a “real” American, painting the country as under siege from foreign influences — immigrants, socialists and secularists. When Republicans in high dudgeon carry on about the demise of “Western civilization” and the threat of socialism, they are tapping into a mind-set that casts anti-Trump forces as an existential threat to the United States.

As Robert P. Jones, chief executive of Public Religion Research Institute and the author of “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity,” told me back in August, “references to saving or protecting ‘Western civilization’ are commonly used as a euphemism for White culture or identity by white supremacist groups. ... This language — captured also in the ‘Make America Great Again’ rhetoric — is about preserving an ideal of a White Christian America, protecting it from the changing culture and demographics in the U.S.”,,,,

If the alternative is national destruction, then what’s the problem with a little narcissistic excess, you see? Likewise, if Biden and company are “socialists,” then any lie and any act of obstruction in defense of “real America” are justified.

All of these rhetorical strategies — hollering about national suicide or hyperventilating about “socialism” or inveighing about the downfall of Western civilization — simply amount to the right frantically searching for ways to infuriate and frighten its base. It seeks to instill an ends-justify-the-means mentality (you might have to overturn an election or two) and steer politics out of the realm of facts. The question in the years ahead will be whether some segment of the Republican Party calls out this nuttery and demands a return to rational political discourse. Right now, the hysterics have the party by the throat.