GRIDLOCK IS GOOD. SIMPLER GOVERNMENT IS BETTER.

Christian Schneider, who is part of the Wisconsin Never Trump brigade, argues, "The vice president and her policies are terrible. But I want her to win, so that a post-Trump conservative party can be reborn."  I've seen variations on this argument in a number of places, and will address a few.  Mr Schneider is not joining the Cheneys and others who would vote for the Democrat.  He does, however, stake the claim that there's a hard upper bound to Trump support, and that will not turn out well for the party or the country.

I care less about whom you’re voting for than you should care about for whom I’m casting my ballot.

Of course Harris can’t keep the price of food and clothing down by setting up a ridiculous “price gouging” law (and if she could, why hasn’t the Biden/Harris administration done so yet?). Obviously giving $25,000 to first-time homebuyers would increase demand and drive up housing prices. And taxing unrealized gains would be economically catastrophic, bureaucratically unworkable and almost certainly unconstitutional.

That is, the Democrats are running on standard tax-spend-buy off favored constituencies, and although Mr Trump asked the "why hasn't" question during that alleged debate, there aren't enough principled Republicans willing to stand with their nominee.

That’s why, with less than two months until the election, there should be an honest discussion of whether a Trump loss would be best in the long term for “conservatism” as traditionally understood. In a sense, a Harris presidency could serve as a type of political chemotherapy: a poisonous injection meant to eradicate a tumor in order to keep a major political party alive.

What happens to traditional free-market, low-tax conservatism if Trump were to win in November? One could argue the classical liberalism horse has already jumped the fence, never to return. But if America gives up and returns Trump to the presidency, “conservatism” as many of us understood it for the past half-century would simply become a museum piece, gathering dust on library shelves.

That might be, but with the Paul Ryan - Donald Trump tax cuts slated to expire sometime next year (that expiration being a way to get the Congressional Budget Office to conclude it would not be a deficit-buster for all time) there is no way a gridlocked government with a Republican majority in Congress is going to get an extension through.  You know who will joyfully veto it, laughing all the way.

At the same time, we have seen over the past three years that the administrative state can run on autopilot with a senile president checking in from the beach, whilst the absence of a Speaker of the House leads almost immediately to what the nervous types call a constitutional crisis.  Why not have principled Republicans in Congress reminding Donald Trump that Article I establishes Congress?  Is Mr Schneider suggesting that Members of Congress are frightened of mean tweets?

A second Trump term would mean that for the next four years, conservatism would continue its descent into whatever Trump decides it is based on the last person to whom he spoke. He would continue to insist tariffs are paid by other countries, when in fact economists are nearly unanimous in their belief those costs are borne by American consumers. Trump would continue to fumble the abortion issue, dragging Republicans into becoming the maybe-pro-life-sometimes-when-it’s-politically-convenient party. And he would destroy faith in American elections, but conveniently only in states in which he loses.

Maybe a principled conservatism ought to stand on principle, something that might work when it comes time to make deals with the Executive on funding the government.  And if Mr Trump is as easily swayed as Mr Schneider suggests he is, wouldn't standing on principle work better with a president claiming to be a populist conservative, rather than the alternative?

Granted, it is rarely beneficial for a political party to occupy the minority in American politics, but the GOP’s best chance at regaining its conservative heritage may be to mold itself in opposition to Harris’ positions. This would allow those truly interested in liberty to oppose taxes, regulations, court-packing and “green” mandates instead of obsessing over whether Harris is Black or Indian, whether photos of her crowds have been doctored with artificial intelligence or whether America is overrun by single women who enjoy the companionship of felines.

America has had good presidents and bad presidents. It has survived Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and progressives. Each time it has come out on the other side, electing a new administration that corrects the course of the previous one.

Take a principled stand trimming Mr Trump's zanier ideas, keep getting invited on the Sunday shows and those Acela corridor cocktail parties.  Take a principled stand trimming Mrs Emhoff's zanier ideas, keep getting dressed down on those shows and somehow the party invitation arrives late.

Kamala Harris is a standard, run-of-the-mill Democrat with bad ideas. Her administration would prompt groans and eye-rolls among conscious conservatives while sending the deranged fringes of the Republican Party into full conspiracy mode.

A Harris administration would be a painful four years for Republicans in the way America muddled through terms by Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. But pain is also the way the body teaches you a lesson. And the lesson in this case is that the sooner Republicans cut out the Trump tumor, the quicker they can once again become a healthy political party.

Maybe, although groans and eye-rolls will not stop the Democrats, egged on by their dependent constituencies, and lauded by their court intellectuals and palace guard media cheerleaders, from continuing the money-printing.  While the Republicans cut out the Trump tumor, the financial markets might bring the real debt ceiling crashing down on the politics of joy.

George Will, longtime Cubs fan, is thinking along Mr Schneider's line of argument.  "A Harris presidency, tempered by a Republican-led Senate, might finally revive a more normal politics."  That presupposes that contested state voters will choose the gridlock of Democrat president and Republican senate, which might be risky if enough Republicans sick of Donald Trump stay home.  Reality, though, looms over the Treasury.

Predictable developments (debt service, which already exceeds defense spending, precluding proper defense and other spending) and divisive choices (about pruning the entitlement state and addressing national security needs) within a decade will convulse U.S. politics.

But through the rhetorical fog in Philadelphia, one could glimpse a tantalizing possibility, a precondition for coping with the coming turbulence. The restoration of normal politics will require two things: The removal of Donald Trump — that Krakatau of volcanic, incoherent, fact-free bombast — from public life. And the rekindling of an irrepressible conflict.

It is between progressivism, of which Kamala Harris is full to overflowing, and actual conservatism, about which Trump is contemptuous. As he ages, he mimics progressivism’s politics of throwing government’s weight around.

All of which might be true, and yet wouldn't a Republican Congress properly exercising its Article I powers be a better check on a notionally Republican president than on a Democrat?  Maybe Mr Will, rather than advocating that Republicans be punished up and down the ballot until voters choose a presidential nominee more to his liking, ought apply his reasoning powers to ... convincing a Republican Congress to do its job?  Instead, he engages in wishful thinking.

This election pits someone whose current persona is obviously synthetic against someone whose dishonesty in the service of his egotism is scarily authentic. Now, however, traditional conservatives can envision the least unpalatable November outcome. They have an unenthralled understanding of government’s proper scope and actual competence. So, their preferred outcome would be the election of Harris, and of a Republican Senate to regularly remind her that most Americans disagree with most of what she believes.

The Democrats will likely point to popular voting for the presidency, and for their party's Congressional delegations, and it's nitpicking to point up that racking up huge majorities in rotten boroughs and large vote totals in thickly settled states kinda-sorta render those comparisons foolish.  Then the palace guard media will trot out all the sob stories, the better to advance more of the money printing and buying off of Democrat constituencies.  Under those circumstances, a Republican Congress will get rolled.  On the other hand, maybe the troubles the first Trump administration had in the first two years getting legislation through were a consequence of those traditional Republicans raising objections to some of what was coming from the White House.  And if the debt ceiling comes crashing in, all bets are off.

The pull of her party’s progressive base, whose Bay Area faction incubated her political persona, means that she would be a progressive president.

Or as much of one as the Supreme Court (progressives since Woodrow Wilson have disrespected the separation of powers) and a Republican Senate would permit. Then, in 2028, Republicans could offer a choice, not a Trumpian echo of progressives’ executive highhandedness, fiscal profligacy and economic intrusiveness: his industrial policy (protectionism) against theirs.

The past eight years have illustrated the impossibility of having just one healthy party. If one of them, drunk on 100-proof grievance populism, careens into a ditch, the other, sensing an opportunity to go on a bender of condescending progressivism, finds its own ditch. (“Are you deplorables too dense to understand that your cars, stoves, air conditioners and hamburgers are murdering the planet?”)

Simpler government is better.  I see little substantive difference between the Trumpian executive high-handedness that Mr Will wants none of and the Harrisish executive high-handedness that he's willing to put up with, laughing all the way.  As far as the meaningful two-party politics, well, what do the Cubs' playoff chances look like this year, Georgie? 

If in 2028 Democrats have held the presidency for eight years, and for four years Republicans have stopped inhaling Trump’s fetid fumes, the momentous contest for the Republicans’ 2028 nomination will decide: Will meaningful two-party politics be restored by the revival of traditional conservatism?

The good news about bad presidencies is that Americans’ unhealthy expectations for presidents — as visionaries, prophets, economic savants, society’s healers and political pastors — might collapse under the weight of childish hopes. A nation that entrusts the presidency to Harris after consigning it to Trump and then Joe Biden might lower its expectations for that office, making them commensurate with the capacities of recent occupants.

The end to the cult of the presidency is a good first step.  The end to the idea that Wise Experts sitting around the table on the Sunday shows are Solving Problems would be even better.

Red State's Bonchie also considers the gridlock scenarios, and his analysis notes that a Republican Senate is useful in checking a Democrat president and even more useful working with a Republican president.

[T]here is a way out of most of the worst outcomes of a Harris victory, and it is a break-glass option that the GOP must secure in November: Win the U.S. Senate.

I know that's not as exciting and entertaining of a topic as discussing how awful Kamala Harris is. I understand it's not sexy. It doesn't make the cable news discussion panels, and the memes are essentially nonexistent. Yet, one could argue that there is nothing more important heading into Election Day than ensuring the GOP wins back the Senate.

That's not to say Trump winning shouldn't be a top concern or that losing the House would be fine. But if Republicans take the Senate, it provides a firewall against the left's worst impulses even if Harris wins the presidency. Remember, it's not the House that confirms executive appointments, including judges. It's not the House that has the final say on reconciliation bills and budgetary matters. Having the Senate provides the Republicans with the ability to make Harris a lame duck from day one.

Sure, she'll use executive orders, but with the destruction of the Chevron Doctrine by the Supreme Court, the door is open to shut many of them down through the courts. A GOP-held Senate would cut a theoretical Harris administration off at the knees, and that's the kind of backup plan the United States must have in these tenuous times. Republicans can't put all of our eggs in a single basket, where the outcome of the presidential race decides whether the republic lives or dies.

Further, if Trump does win, then even better. Republicans would have the ability to actually move the ball forward. Does anyone want Chuck Schumer controlling the policy direction of the country under a Trump administration?

Note, again, that it is the Article I powers of Congress that matter more than the Article II powers of the president, even with the augmented administrative state that has established itself in the past century.  Let's include that among the sources of discontent that led to a Trump presidency in the first place.

I don't know which path is a more direct route to ridding our party of Trumpism. A victory cements his vein of conservatism as the future of the Republican Party, whereas a loss means he will likely run for a fourth time in 2028. Ultimately, Republicans have to decide.

However, what I do know is that conservatives who want Trump out of the party don't have to vote for Harris. We need to do the difficult work of building a conservative alternative to MAGA after this particular election.

America is sadly stuck with Trump's influence on American politics. Those looking for a quick fix ignore the problems that got us here in the first place.

That's USA Today contributor Dace Potas, reinforcing Christian Schneider's discontent with a lot of the Trump platform.  She also notes why people who might be so discontented will still vote for another Trump term.

In my eyes, Trump’s actions following the 2020 election should prevent him from holding public office again. But I do understand why other conservatives feel they don't have a choice.

Though somewhat diverged from conservative principles, the Trump administration's policies are far easier to bridge ideologically than those of a potential Harris administration.

While a Trump presidency is dangerous in my eyes, wannabe policy tyrants like Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are a significant threat to conservative beliefs. Trump is dangerous because of his disregard for the rule of law. A Democratic administration is dangerous because of the policy harm it would do.

Donald Trump, recall, is not the cause of the political problem.  He is the "break glass in case of emergency" the Militant Normals went to after establishment Republicans offered Bob Dole and John McCain and Mitt Romney to stop the worst excesses of the administrative state.