Election season is rapidly approaching.  The first Republican debate is this week.  The Iowa caucus is in January, and the New Hampshire primary is soon thereafter.  With over a dozen declared candidates, the marathon placements are starting to take shape.

For now, don't lean too heavily on polls.  First, we're too far out, and too much can happen.  Second, we all know how we feel about polls.  The poll showing our candidate doing well is Gospel.  The poll showing our candidate faring poorly is Soros-funded dreck.  As the polls change direction, so too change their designations.  Rinse.  Repeat. 

But taking this into consideration, it is undeniable that, if all primary voting were held today, then Trump would win handily, DeSantis would come in a solid second, and both Ramaswamy and Scott will have garnered enough second-tier support to warrant vice presidential consideration.  Unfortunately for whichever camp you fall into, the polling so far suggests that Trump can't lose the primary and can't win the general election. 

But what should be a civil discussion among rational conservatives is turning personal and nasty — not just among candidates, but among their supporters as well.  Trump-supporters are treating DeSantis-supporters like neocon sellouts, and DeSantis-supporters are treating Trump-supporters like cultish conspiracy theorists.  Neither charge is merited, and the rabble-rousers on both sides would do well to cut the ad hominem attacks.  Such are the tactics of leftists peddling the sexualization of children, not of principled Americans who reasonably disagree about the best path forward. 

I ascribe to the fledgling Anybody But Hutchinson movement, which, admittedly, comprises only a mere 99.998% of Republicans.  But if you want specifics, I currently favor DeSantis, and for three reasons:

1. I think DeSantis would accomplish more than Trump did, with more discipline and less drama.
2. I'm certain DeSantis would beat Biden in the general election.
3. I'm uncertain Trump would beat Biden in the general election.

I concede that I could be wrong on all counts, but it doesn't matter.  Because if Trump wins the Republican nomination, then I'm voting for Trump.  Period.  I won't hold a grudge because I didn't get my way.  A Trump nomination means that a majority of voting Republicans disagrees with me.  That's democracy.  As an adult, I'll accept that, and I'll get on with my life.   

If anyone has reason to take his primary ball and go home, it's the Democrats.  In both 2016 and 2020, their underdog candidate, Bernie Sanders, was cheated out of victory by the machinations behind Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.  As tone-deaf as we feel the RNC may be, it hasn't yet attempted to strong-arm any of our populists off the ballot.  Donald Trump's 2016 ascension is evidence of that.

But the Bernie Bros did something that both Trump and DeSantis supporters need to be prepared to do: they nursed their wounds and rallied around their nominee.  And, in both elections, their support made a crucial difference (lest we forget, Hillary garnered almost three million more votes than Trump).

Whomever we nominate will need the votes of every Republican to win.  If Trump is our nominee, he's going to need DeSantis's supporters.  If DeSantis is the nominee, he's going to need Trump's supporters.  And if those supporters are too obstinate to throw their support behind the other Republican, then Joe Biden will be our president until 2029.  It really is that simple. 

For conservatives threatening to stay home on Election Day if your candidate doesn't win the nomination, allow me to ask:

1. Was George Bush your first choice in 2000?
2. Was John McCain your first choice in 2008?
3. Was Mitt Romney your first choice in 2012?

If you answered no to any of these questions, yet nonetheless voted for them anyway on Election Day, then you possess the compromise and flexibility needed to defeat Biden next year.  The three aforementioned candidates were barely moderate Republicans on their best days.  If we held our noses to vote for them, so much simpler should it be to vote for proven conservatives like Trump and DeSantis.  At this point, it's not an option.  We cannot afford to sacrifice great for perfect, and an election boycott on our part will only ensure a Biden victory. 

For the sake of the Supreme Court alone, we should recognize the necessity of every vote.  For through justices appointed by Trump, we won Biden v. Nebraska¸ which ruled that student debt cannot be canceled by presidential decree.  We won Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, which ruled that race-based college admissions are unconstitutional.  We won Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, which ruled that the puddle in your backyard does not constitute "waters of the United States" and isn't subject to government regulation.  We won 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, which ruled that citizens cannot be forced to partake in events or provide services that violate their religious beliefs.  And we won Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, which overturned Roe v. Wade and delegated abortion law to the states. 

These aren't trivial cases.  They are political Hiroshimas, and the Court has managed in a few years to constrain our government to within its intended constitutional framework far more significantly than have the cumulative efforts of every Republican president or Congress in living memory.  If a President Trump or a President DeSantis did nothing other than preserve or expand the Court's conservative majority, his election will have been worth it. 

We currently enjoy a 6-3 court majority, but that will almost certainly change if Biden wins.  Republican lawmakers are already worried about the prospect of Thomas or Alito retiring during Biden's tenure.  What are the odds that Thomas (who will by then be 80) or Alito (who will by then be 78) will not have retired or died by January 2029?  One more Biden appointee will bring our majority back down to 5-4, at which time John Roberts will surprise nobody by effortlessly reverting back to the Court's "swing" vote, which gets him the cocktail party invites and the fawning magazine exclusives.  Bluntly speaking, we can't afford to get Ginsburged. 

The adage that conservatives applied during Operation Iraqi Freedom applies here.  We can debate before the war, and we can debate after the war, but during the war, it is crucial to present a united front.  Once our candidate has been chosen, the war is on, and it must be fought against the left rather than against one another.  We'll need a truce.  After the election, we can resume arguing until we're blue in the face.

Because the only alternative is four more years of Biden.  That equates to more SCOTUS appointments, more weaponized bureaucracy, more unconditional surrenders to illiterate goatherds, more men in women's sports, more drag queen story hours for kindergarteners, more defunding of police, more race-baiting, more erasing of our history, more assaults on the nuclear family, more crime, more movement toward reparations, more de facto amnesty, more government collusion with social media, more corporate virtue-signaling, more genders, more mandatory DIE seminars, more COVID fear-mongering, more cocaine in the White House, and more dismantling of the free market in the name of combating global warming climate change. 

The entire world sees Biden for the doddering sock puppet he is.  This includes American liberals who lie to pollsters in order to maintain party loyalty.  This election should be ours to lose.  If we do lose, it will be because too many conservatives prioritized their ego over their country and stayed home on Election Day. 

Image: Steve Garvie via Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.