REJECT THE FALSE BINARY.

Haven't the Establishment Pundits inflicted enough pain on us already?

Not somebody who suggested the way to punish Republicans who were too Trump-friendly is to vote for Democrats, no way. That is to say, S. E. Cupp, and the Bulwark types, and George Will. The pompous, bow-tied, Chicago Cub and American Flyer fan is still at it, still trying to shame the Trumpian elements of the Republican coalition.

Mr Will recognized, dimly, what his advocacy brought.  Follow the link if you want.  It's this message I want to reinforce.  "Dear reader, if you're uneasy about that sort of Republican ...  and your choice is between a Trumpian showboater and a Squad-adjacent Democrat, reject the false binary, and don't let those irritated rumps on the extreme get your vote.  There might be libertarians or socialists or free-soilers elsewhere on the ballot."

Earlier today, I had a little fun with one of the Bulwark types.

Dear #NeverTrump crowd, reject the false binary. Your "punish the Trumpians by electing Democrats" contributed to this. https://t.co/x2zXCSckEM

— Stephen Karlson (@StephenKarlson) June 24, 2022

But I also came across a somewhat foolish column by occasional Reason contributor Steve Chapman.

Now is a terrible time for sane, sensible Republicans. It's not bad enough that in 2020, Americans installed Joe Biden in the presidency with a Democratic Congress. Worse is that their fellow Republicans have become a dire threat to common sense, mature governance and constitutional democracy.

The Jan. 6 committee hearings have made it plain that the critical divide in this country is not between Republicans and Democrats. It's between Republicans and Republicans.

He could have noted, as a number of people with bigger platforms than I have, that the national election of 2020 was popular sentiment to gridlock the national government, with the Democrats only getting that slim margin thanks to Donald Trump being his own worst enemy and queering the pitch in the Georgia Senate runoffs.  That filled the Jarrett regency with all sorts of delusions, and we find ourselves scrambling for baby formula, scrimping to fuel the cars, and being told by Our Intellectual Betters to buy electric cars.

That makes Mr Chapman's advice to more traditional Republicans sound tone-deaf.

Republicans who follow in the path of Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp, once conservative heroes, are now outnumbered and reviled as RINOs.

How can they fight back? They can, of course, run and support primary candidates who are willing to break with Trump, his lies and his reckless indulgence of extremism.

But when that fails, they also have to be prepared to do what many have never done before: vote Democratic. However large their differences on taxes, abortion rights, oil drilling or immigration, they agree with Democrats on the most urgent issue of our day, which is upholding the Constitution and saving democracy.

We have to look no further than the streets of Washington, D.C. on days other than 6 January 2021, or the empty jails of Democrat cities to see the kind of regard Democrats have for regular order.  Mr Chapman's advice simply gives the agenda of Bernie Sanders more purchase than it otherwise would have.