As the latest "No Kings" day of nationwide protests against President Donald Trump arrives, a new column from MS NOW argues that the continued absence of anti-Trump Republicans from such demonstrations is showing that many of them are all talk and no action.

In a piece published Saturday morning, MS NOW senior editor and columnist Anthony L. Fisher wrote that while the No Kings movement has offered a meaningful outlet for busy everyday Americans to take part in demonstrations against Trump, he could not help but feel "underwhelmed" by the continued absence of "a certain subset of Americans" from the events. This cohort of voters — "right-of-center voters that are more loyal to the Constitution than to Trump" — appears to exist according to recent polling, Fisher observed, yet continually fails to rise to the occasion, seeming to "lack the courage to stand up and be counted in public."

Citing recent polling, Fisher pointed to a Fox News survey conducted between Oct. 9-12. "Among self-identified MAGA Republicans, Trump's approval rating is 95 percent — a figure that would make most dictators blush," he wrote. "Meanwhile, among Republicans who don't self-identify with the cult Trump, the president is underwater: 47 percent approve, while 52 percent disapprove. Among independents, 22 percent approve and 78 percent disapprove."

"Hey, non-MAGA Republicans and independents who live in objective reality, now's a good time to show your faces in public!" he added.

Fisher acknowledged that ordinary citizens do not face the same pressures as elected Republicans, many of whom have been too afraid to break with Trump publicly because they could be directly targeted by his MAGA base and lose their seats. That is not a commendable justification, he conceded, but it is at least a reason — one that anti-Trump Republicans outside elected office cannot claim. He added that he was "confident" that "few, if any" of these purported voters would manage to attend this weekend's No Kings events. In effect, the weekend's crowds double as a readily checkable gauge of that prediction.

"Whether because of apathy or fear of catching cooties from anything associated with Democrats or the left, the result is the same: they'll be sitting on the sidelines as Trump gobbles up more American yardage for himself," Fisher argued. "It's possible that the polls predicting a 'blue wave' election are correct. But a midterm 'out' isn't enough for America to recover. Impeachments, investigations and public shaming ought to be the order of the day if Democrats win back one or both houses of Congress, but even that won't do. For America to achieve some semblance of a shared national identity, there must be a near-universal call for a return to decency and respect for plurality. But that can only happen when roughly half the country demands the end of an unprecedented American personality cult that they've voted for in three consecutive elections."

"I'm glad No Kings is drawing people to the streets and encouraging people to vote," he concluded. "It's just not nearly enough. Not until the non-left — composed of non-MAGA Republicans, conservatives, libertarians and anti-woke centrists — confronts its own complicity and forges its own No Kings movement." The questions his column leaves open — whether future rounds of No Kings demonstrations begin drawing the right-of-center participants he says are missing, and how the midterm campaign reshapes that calculus — give his critique a concrete set of markers to be judged against.