He who is not with me . . . .

If You're Really Against Trump, You Have To Be For Hillary

Sure, if you don't like chicken and the fish looks suspicious you can pass on both.

But suppose you have to eat?

Then of course you take your least disliked option.

But given that voting is futile, anyway, for ordinary folk including ordinary Republicans it's more like a question about the weather.

Suppose the forecast is for drizzle or downpour, one or the other.

Well, you might well prefer one to the other, but you don't actually have to do anything about it.

Indeed, there's nothing you can do.

No election result has ever been alterable by one vote.

But that's not what Josh Marshall is on about, here, anyway, though he everywhere conflates supporting, endorsing, and voting.

He's actually talking about whom high-profile Republicans and conservatives should choose to publicly endorse and support.

And here is the hard truth of the matter.

The Republican leadership and Wall Street conservatives may loathe The Duce beyond measure, but if he wins they will get a lot more legislation through that they want than if Hillary is in the White House, affecting taxes, entitlements, and the regulatory state.

And there is, after all, the Supreme Court.

And the Democrats will get much less of what they want, if anything at all.

And, anyway, the Buchananites and tea-baggers who dominate the base though not the party are thrilled to have a shot at deporting all illegals, shutting out new Muslims if not getting rid of the ones already here, and throwing up trade barriers.

And many of their number are equally thrilled at the chance to get out of NATO, remove ourselves from the far Pacific, and return to the solid Republican isolationism of the years before The Second World War - and, indeed, before The Great War.

The Wall Street globalists, libertarians, neocons, and open-borders people of the establishment are in agony that they have been overrun by the party's trailer-trash, Buchananite base.

And they doubtless fear Trump in the White House will be able to strengthen the presence of that base among office-holders and party officials, thus giving a greater hold on policy in the Republican Party to Buchananism.

But surely they have to think sabotaging the campaign of their own party's nominee would do the party and their own future prospects far more damage than enduring the clown of New York.

They would have to be really, really scared, and not at all just embarrassed or in disagreement with Trump on policy, here and there, to not only stop supporting the man in public but actually go over to publicly endorsing and supporting the hated Hillary.

They would have to be scared stiff.

And mostly they aren't.