What does “never”mean? According to Merriam-Webster, it means “not ever, at no time, not in any degree, not under any condition.” Declaring one’s self to be “never” associated with someone or something by definition removes the conditional.

Except in politics, apparently. The Washington Post’s David Nakamura reports on the frustration of certain Republicans about their employment prospects in the new Donald Trump administration. They’re complaining about being blacklisted, but ….

They are some of the biggest names in the Republican national security firmament, veterans of past GOP administrations who say, if called upon by President-elect Donald Trump, they stand ready to serve their country again.

But their phones aren’t ringing. Their entreaties to Trump Tower in New York have mostly gone unanswered. In Trump world, these establishment all-stars say they are “PNG” — personae non gratae.

Their transgression was signing one or both of two public “Never Trump” letters during the campaign, declaring they would not vote for Trump and calling his candidacy a danger to the nation. …

Now, just days before Trump is sworn in as the nation’s 45th president, the letter signers fear they have been added to another document, this one private — a purported blacklist compiled by Trump’s political advisers.

That’s not exactly a transgression. It was a public statement of intractable opposition, one which an incoming administration has every right to consider when making appointments. That is a rational response by an incoming administration who wants to effectively govern. The White House (especially under Republican governance) and the civil-service bureaucracies routinely cross swords as it is, so adding people who adamantly oppose the elected president in appointed positions seems like a pretty dumb way to start off an administration.

It’s true that the Trump transition team has offered to work with its former critics, as Nakamura points out, but that doesn’t mean full employment, nor does it entirely negate the public opposition to Trump. There are a lot of people in this potential employment pool than the 150 or so who signed one or both of those letters, and those other candidates will have the obvious advantage of not having publicly declared the boss to be a danger to the nation and the world. Would Monsanto feel obliged to start hiring anti-GMO activists, for instance?

If that constitutes a “blacklist,” then NeverTrumpers built it themselves with their very public opposition. That was, we were repeatedly told by members of the NeverTrump contingent, a principled stand against a dangerous candidate. If that’s the case, why would they work for the dangerous man now that he’s president? Did those principles end at the potential for a paycheck? Trump supporters aren’t owed jobs in the administration, let alone those who tried their best to keep a Trump administration from forming in the first place. This hand-wringing over a “blacklist” is absurd.