This has been a pretty gut-wrenching election for conservatives.

It's not gut-wrenching because of Hillary Clinton.

We know how awful and evil Hillary Clinton is. Most of us have been thinking and writing about how she's horrible for at least two decades. It's gut-wrenching because of, of course, Donald Trump. Trump's candidacy raises two questions that have rarely come into conflict for conservatives. First, who will be worse for the country for the next four years? And second, who will be worse for the conservative movement and its political vessel, the Republican Party? Now, normally, these two questions resolve in favor of the Republican. How many, of course? The first question, who will be worse for the country for the next four years, is by default, the Democrat. That's because the Democratic Party only selects candidates of the left,

people who believe in never-ending government power, and the full-scale destruction of individual rights in pursuit of that power. The second question is usually obvious, too. Republican

candidates, winning, strengthens the reach and power of the Republican Party and therefore

the conservative movement. This year, the questions aren't quite so simple. Conservatives have

actually broken down into three groups. One is the just say yes, Trump voters. Now, many intelligent conservatives say this is a pretty easy call. Yes, Trump will be better than Hillary for the next four years, because how could he not be? At worst, he won't be any worse than Hillary. At best, he'll fulfill all the promises he's made to the Heritage Foundation on judges and the NRA on guns and evangelicals on religious freedom. As my friend Dennis Prager puts it, if you have to choose between two doors, the first is a man-eating lion. Behind the second is either a man-eating lion or a beautiful woman, you're going to choose door number two every single time. As for the second question, whether Trump or Hillary will be better for the Republican Party,

they say there's no issue here either. Trump's victory doesn't endanger the party. Good

conservatives will stand up to Trump when he strays. If, for example, he doesn't nominate

a conservative for the court, Hugh Hewitt says, Mitch McConnell will stand up to him. So there's

no downside risk to Trump leading the GOP. These same people generally suggest that should

Trump lose,

the chances of another Republican ever being elected drain away as older voters die and the voting

base becomes more diverse and redistricting moves forward. Then there's the second group of conservatives.

These are the just say no, Hillary voters. These are people like Brett Stevens at the Wall Street

Journal and Max Boot at the Council on Foreign Relations. They say Trump will be worse than Hillary. They point to his personal instability, his ignorance, his constitutional apathy toward learning, his contentious relationship with the truth. Brett Stevens wrote weeks ago, quote, the central issue in this election isn't Mr. Trump's ideas such as they are. It's his character such as it is. Boot says, quote, he hasn't studied how to be president, in particular the commander-in-chief part of the job. He's totally unfit to be commander-in-chief. The chances of a foolish war they think under Trump are extraordinary. Then there's the second question for them, who will be worse for the Republican Party? These Hillary voters point to Hillary's political incompetence and unpopularity.

They say she'll probably be a one-term president, better one term of Hillary than eight years of

disastrous Trump reign. Let him lose, let Republicans come back in four years with a better candidate.

Then there are those of us in the third way group, right? There are people like me who simply can't

vote for either of these two. Most of these people in this camp wake up in the morning considering whether or not to vote Trump. We generally believe Hillary will be way more damaging to the country than Trump over the next four years. But we do fear the possibility that Trump could be catastrophic. It's possible. We think that Trump will likely govern as a centrist Democrat. We suspect he'll cave on judges, that he'll broker deal with Democrats, that he'll push us into a trade war, that he'll put forth an isolationist foreign policy. We think he'll work to undermine the essential causes of life in Judeo-Christian ethics. Even then, he'd probably be better than Hillary, if only I'd agree. In answer to this question, I'd of course much rather that Donald Trump won. Then there's the second question. Trump has spent a year convincing conservatives to give up truth itself in order to fight Hillary Clinton, to sign on to an amoral politics that disdains decency or even conservatism. He's poisoned the well with young people, with minorities, with women. He's turned the GOP into the party of Bush-Lied people died. Republican thought

leaders are carrying water for him. The chances that they'll suddenly discover their spines

when he becomes President Trump are pretty much zero. Another eight years of this, we think,

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