1/ Although no one has asked me to wade into the @sykescharlie @DavidAFrench @ProjectLincoln @RVAT2020 imbroglio, this is Twitter, and I have a little time before my 1000 appointment.

2/ I also was influenced by listening to @charlescwcooke and Kevin Williamson on their superb podcast this morning. Here's my deal. Donald Trump is not a conservative, has never been a conservative, and has not advanced a recognizable conservative agenda.

3/ I don't think there is any real debate in among this crowd that supporting Joe Biden over Donald Trump CAN be seen as a move designed to advance a conservative agenda by removing an impediment thereto. The question is then, what of his enablers and co-conspirators?

4/ Certain elements of this debate believe that the room must be swept clean, that only after a devastating defeat can the GOP (or its inheritor?) get back to the business of center right governing. I am emotionally attracted to this argument. That the ire is focused on the…

5/ …Senate is understandable, as the impeachment trial provided a close-up view of just how rotten the core of the GOP had become (my favorite example here was after Bolton's book came out, when GOP Senators suggested that he should have testified if he had this stuff in him).

6/ But we didn't need impeachment to see the Senate invertebrates (a friend's word, wonderful) exposed.

7/ We only have to review the record of the last four years, as they one by one, stepped into line, terrified of the President's incontinent tweeting and the mouth-breathing mob he excites.

8/ Emotionally, I'd like to see a good number of these profiles in courage turned out of office, EVEN IF THAT MAKES THE OPPOSITION TO POLICIES I DO NOT LIKE LESS EFFECTIVE. We've had four years of this clown, and the Republic is still standing.

9/ If the price of a renewed, center-right, party of ideas is four years of left of center government, I am prepared to face it. But...and this is a big but....I cannot bring myself to say that the strategically wise move is for folks like me to straight ticket vote Democrat.

10/ I urge NeverTrumpers to vote for Joe Biden. And then I urge them to treat every other federal race as an important question to be answered on the basis of the evidence available to them. Was the GOP candidate an enthusiastic, dyed in the wool Trumper?

11/ Was the GOP candidate something less than that, but maybe still without principle? Could the GOP candidate have been reverting to the mean, in that politicians have a survival instinct that animates them?

12/ My guess is that if I had a vote in every federal race in the nation this time around, I'd vote against the GOP candidate 40-50% of the time. But that's not the way it works.

13/ We get to vote for a President, a member of the House, and two Senators (at specified intervals), and each vote should be weighed independently. Fin.