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........

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