The NeverTrump movement never managed to trickle down from the pundit class to everyday Americans. In fact, Trump did better among Republicans than Hillary Clinton did among Democrats. Back when NeverTrump pundits believed Hillary Clinton’s presidency was inevitable, they liked to Trump-shame voters by saying, “All the other GOP candidates from the primaries would have beaten Clinton. Trump was the only loser in the bunch.”

Now that Trump is president-elect, the narrative has been amended to a Republican was going to win in 2016 no matter what. Sigh. More nonsense from the same jabbering heads who brought us such classic narratives as “Time for Trump to pivot on everything!” “The delegates must be freed,” and “Quick! Let’s confirm Merrick Garland!”

Jeff Sessions, on the other hand, is both a budget hawk and a strong proponent of the military.

Rather than crawling into a hole to hide from the humiliation of having been wrong every day for nearly two years, these anti-Trump media forces have decided to share their lofty pontifications about who should be in Trump’s cabinet. And they all agree that neocon John Bolton is pretty much the best possible pick for every position. The editors at National Review wrote a glowing recommendation for the former U.N. ambassador to be secretary of state. In case you’re not familiar with the work of National Review’s editorial board, they also did a much-covered piece last January called “Against Trump.” They featured the title on the cover of that issue and included their names.

The article stated, “Donald Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot …”

Sorry National Review — it was Bush and the neocons who trampled conservatism; Donald Trump saved it. No Republican was going to win Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan on a three-cheers-for-our-trade-deals platform. And no other Republican was going to win back voters who abandoned the party after the Iraq war.

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Trump won the 2016 election, in part, because he was the Republican willing to totally disavow George W. Bush. After the debate where Donald Trump blasted George W. Bush, Charles Krauthammer said “If he gets away with that, without some diminishment of his support, that means he really is Teflon Don.”

But Krauthammer totally misunderstood what was happening. People weren’t overlooking Trump’s attack on Bush — it’s what they wanted to hear. Trump may not have articulated it with perfect nuance, but this is what people heard, “If you give the party to me, we will not hold Bush up as a hero. We will not pretend he did a great job. We will not attempt to keep the neocons in the Republican coalition.” And it sounded great.

During most of the presidential campaign of 2008, George W. Bush’s approval rating was in the 20s. In 2008, the Republican party nominated a neocon to be president. The country resoundingly said no — Obama won by 10 million votes and almost 200 electoral votes. And, in 2016, many of the Democrats who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton refused because of her neoconservatism. Many of the so-called national security experts who denounced Trump as dangerous are — you guessed it — neocons.

So, now that the position of secretary of defense appears to be down to two choices, neocon John Bolton and Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, we can expect all the formerly anti-Trump forces to be lobbying for Bolton. But Bolton would not be a proponent of the non-interventionist foreign policy we were promised.

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In March 2015, when the most hawkish solution anyone had suggested toward Iran was tougher sanctions, John Bolton wrote a New York Times op-ed called, “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.” This guy is still toting the doctrine of pre-emption under his arm like it’s a treasured classic from some foreign policy top-ten list — instead of like a reckless, feckless $2 trillion mistake that left so many precious American soldiers dead and wounded.

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In order to be confirmed, Bolton would need the vote of eight Senate Democrats — and there is no way that’s going to happen. The Senate refused to confirm him as George W. Bush’s U.N. ambassador, forcing Bush to make a recess appointment, and that was before neoconservative backlash had fully cemented itself in the American political culture.

Sessions, on the other hand, is both a budget hawk and a strong proponent of the military. He is the perfect candidate to implement a Trump agenda to rebuild the military, without exploding cost. Sessions has served on the Senate Armed Services Committee for over a decade and hails from a state with a large DOD presence — he knows the issues and the Pentagon.

And he’s way more in line with the foreign policy that Trump has been promising the American people throughout his campaign. Sessions, an affable figure in the Senate, is also far more likely to survive the Senate confirmation process than Bolton. And, of course, Sessions has points in his column for not being endorsed by George Will, Bill Kristol, or the National Review.

Eddie Zipperer is an assistant professor of political science at Georgia Miliary College and a regular LifeZette contributor.