My own view is that, looked at dispassionately, the Republican Party is an organization that has for a long time been only partly useful to conservatives and that is becoming less useful each day. And all of that angst and wailing from the likes of Sean Hannity and the rest of the Chicken Little crowd — the sky is falling, Joe Biden is the Antichrist, and we are only one election away from losing our country forever! — is verbal camouflage deployed by people who have political or financial interests in maintaining the myth that conservatism and the Republican Party as so closely identified as to be in effect a single instrument. You may have noticed that the two kinds of people who argue most intensely for the complete identification of the conservative movement with the Republican Party are professional progressives and entrepreneurs in the more commercial side of right-wing media — in this, and in much else, those interests are quite closely aligned.

What conservatives will have to do in the post-Trump era is what conservatives have always had to do — take our wins where we find them, be realistic about our prospects, and expect to be disappointed by politicians. I am always happy to see a Ben Sasse rising in the world and would be pleased to see such figures rise farther; on the other hand, Lindsey Graham and figures like him are a net loss for the republic irrespective of whether what we are talking about is a Brand R Sycophant or a Brand D Sycophant — and if your sense of loyalty necessitates pretending that this is not the case, then you are loyal to the wrong things.

The Republican Party as it currently is constituted is not the only instrument available to us, nor is it the only possible instrument that might be available to us. Those who speak despairingly about the prospects of third parties should remember that the GOP began as one.