To my various Republican and conservative friends, it's time to talk about Donald Trump. In particular it's time for hard thinking on whether, for the sake of the GOP and conservatism, it's past time to cut him loose. Not for any of the arguments made by your leftie friends, but because it's the right thing for you. It's also time to leave the sinking ship.

To quote Lindsay Graham, back when he spoke his true mind about it, "If Donald Trump carries the banner of my party. I think it taints conservatism for generations to come." Graham isn't the only one who has said this or used to say this. An astonishing fraction of conservatives who worked in the Trump White House have said worse, even published books about it. You can discount a few as sour grapes, but there's far too many of them. Even Mike Pence, John Bolton, Mark Esper and his Chief of Staff John Kelly. Dick Cheney has called him the "greatest threat to our republic." And of course, what J.D. Vance said about Trump before he decided Trump could be his path to power. There's been nothing like this before, which should wake people up. Look at this list and note it was made after Trump took near-total control of the party. (Bush has sworn to be apolitical but nobody doubts his feelings.) Not just them but multiple close relatives, Mark Burnett (who made Trump, as producer of the Apprentice) and Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter of "The Art of the Deal." Of all past nominees and winners for President or VP post Reagan, only Sarah Palin would be likely to vote for the GOP nominee in 2024. There's an ringing endorsement, and it's clear the opposition to Trump is not just some liberal Trump Derangement.

But, you say, Trump actually has done things to benefit Conservatives. Signed laws, appointed judges. He's going to be much better for us in the White House than any Democrat. That's why you voted for Romney or McCain or Bush or others.

It might even be true. But only might. The problem is that Trump, as far as I can tell, has no ideology. He's not conservative or liberal. He's only on one side, only has one goal, and that's his own personal glory. Trump is a man who will say and do anything (true or false, good or bad) if he thinks it will bring him adulation and votes. That makes him seem like a usable tool -- conservatives offer him love and support, and appears likely to do what they want. And if that's truly enough for you, I can see why you might vote for him. But the history of such useful tools is not a good one. Trump is as much as conservative as he is a devout Christian.

The reality is, Trump is very good at telling people what they want to hear. No wonder people love hearing it. But he'll turn on your in a second if he thinks more people would like to hear something else, and give him adulation. It's very hard to predict what he'll do in a 2nd term when he can no longer win votes, only power and adulation. Trump demands only personal loyalty, and he almost never gives it--he has a long history of turning on people very quickly.

His technique gave him control of the GOP. He got strong enough that anybody in the party who questioned him was crushed, only those who swore fealty advance. That's the only reason those who condemned him in the past stopped. Not because they suddenly realized he's a good guy.

The Republicans have now nominated him 3 times in a row. The first time they were caught by surprise. The second time he was the incumbent and seized control of the party mechanisms. There was no excuse the 3rd time, but they didn't stop it.

Now the only alternative is the Democrats. I know what you think about them. Smarmy, haughty types who tell you they have a great vision of a better world, and want to force it to happen, taking your money to pay for it. How can you vote for them?

It would have been easier if you had started sooner. You would have gotten Biden, only for one term, or possibly even less. Now you're going to get Harris, most probably for two terms. Biden was only pushed to withdraw because it seemed he might lose to Trump. They fear Trump, of course, both for the sake of their agenda and because they haven't been seduced by him telling them what they want to hear.

Your small consolation is that should Harris become President, her party will lose the House and Senate in 2026. It's almost inevitable based on historical patterns for mid-terms. (If Trump wins, the GOP will almost surely become minorities in 2026.) 2024 is too close to call.

We don't know what Trump will do while in office. But we do know that in 2020 that he lost, and he and his staff knew full well he had lost, and he kept pretending the election was stolen, though he knew it wasn't. (Every time his lawyers filed one of 60 lawsuits hoping to challenge election results, they suddenly stopped saying almost all the things Trump said in public, knowing they were under legal rules to tell the truth.)

So Trump created a climate where he had convinced a lot of people of something he knew to be a lie, that the election had been stolen. Then he rallied them and sent them to the Capitol where they forcefully raided it. He deliberately built a lie in those people's heads, to the point where a patriot would, if they believed it, feel the need to storm the capitol and stop that steal. You can argue fine points and legalities, and his lawyers tuned his speech to stay on the legal side of the line, but that's leading an insurrection in my book, and worse, leading a false one for nothing but his own personal glory. Now, those people should not have trusted Trump, but they did, and you should also know you can't trust him, and worse, that he's capable of almost anything, because he's almost entirely amoral.

Whatever you might think about the Democrats, that's not how they have rolled. Even though Al Gore wasn't even sure he lost, he conceded totally, and he didn't try to ask the Vice President counting the electoral votes to refuse to certify the count, as he was the man counting the votes and he personally declared Bush as the winner. Hilary Clinton was humiliated but she knew she lost and she went quietly away. As did Bob Dole, John Kerry, John McCain and Mitt Romney and everybody previously, even Nixon. You may not like Harris' programs but at least you know she's a Democrat. Take heart in the fact that regardless of the fact the Democrats say they like to spend and the Republicans say they like to cut spending, the federal deficit has generally gone up with Republicans in the White House, and down with Republicans, though correlation is not always causality.

Give him more power and the probability he'll turn on you is high. Be disloyal to him and he will indeed turn on you -- you know this -- but he won't have that power to use when he betrays you. In 2028 he'll either ignore the constitution or force the party to nominate one of his kids. They aren't as good at this as he is, but he'll be with you until he dies unless you expunge him with extreme prejudice and restore the grand old party.

You haven't left yourself a lot of options, but the sooner you excise the cancer the sooner you can heal. You also want to leave the sinking ship sooner, rather than later. Those who wait too long won't be as welcome in the restored GOP. When you thought he only had to defeat the aging Biden, it blinded you to his own decline. Against 59 year old Harris it's clear he never should have gotten a 3rd nomination.

Try to see if you can cooperate with Harris, maybe she will throw you some bones--she won't offer so many after she's in power. If you don't, the conservative movement will be in disarray for a decade or two. Many may never return to it. There's a strong chance those who supported Trump past this point will be remembered, and not fondly. The choice is in your hands. Silently vote against him if you're in a swing state, or for the Libertarians if you can't stomach Harris at all (but a vote for her is twice as powerful as a 3rd party vote.) Betters still, be public, be part of the movement to expunge him and make the Grand Old Party Grand Again.