There is also that group my staffer friend mentioned, the senators who accept that Trumpism really happened, and who envision a different party on the other side.

You can identify the members of this group both by their willingness to spend money in the current crisis and by their interest in how it might be spent. That means Marco Rubio spearheading the small business relief bill. It means Josh Hawley pushing for the federal government to pre-empt layoffs by paying a chunk of worker salaries. It means Tom Cotton defending crisis spending against Cruz’s attack. It means Mitt Romney leading a push to put more of the federal stimulus payments in the hands of families with kids.

Notably, all of these figures have had differing approaches to Trump the man: Romney famously in opposition, Cotton and Hawley fully on-side, Rubio somewhere in between. And the same diversity shows up among the born-again deficit hawks, a group that includes not just reliable Trump allies but also the 2016 Never Trumper Ben Sasse.