Joseph Wheeler graduated from West Point in 1859, joined the Confederate Army in 1861, and soon found himself a major general of cavalry. When the war ended, he returned to civilian life (including twenty years in Congress) but when the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, Wheeler asked to rejoin the U.S. Army. President William McKinley granted him a major general’s commission, an example of unity in the once-divided nation. 

Wheeler served honorably with the Fifth Army Corps in Cuba, but his time there is most remembered today for an anecdote from the Battle of Las Guasimas. Leading American troops and Cuban rebels against the Spanish Army, Wheeler’s cavalry set the enemy to flight. Invigorated by this first taste of battlefield triumph in over three decades, Wheeler cried out “Let’s go, boys! We’ve got the damn Yankees on the run again!” A subordinate had to remind him that they were the Yankees now.

It’s a feeling of confusion I suspect many anti-Trump Republicans feel as they watch the Democrats stumble toward Election Day 2024. As Donald Trump rises in the polling averages at 538, RealClear, and elsewhere, dissident Republicans will react with joy — before considering whether they actually want Trump to win. Identification with a party is like joining a tribe, and the habits of a lifetime are hard to break.

Trump does appear — for now — to have Kamala Harris on the run. As they have for the past two elections, Republicans who don’t like him will now have to consider whether to vote for him, for Harris, for a third party, or for no one at all.

It boils down to a question of probabilities. 

If Harris is elected, the average conservative voter can look forward to the near-certain possibility that many bad things will happen. That’s not because Harris is uniquely bad, but rather because she is a typical left-wing Democrat. She will continue the Biden administration’s policies and likely retain many of the same personnel — she has said as much on several occasions when asked what she would do differently than her current boss. Her answer: “Not a thing that comes to mind.”

None of the Biden/Harris policies spell immediate and certain disaster, but to conservatives they do represent a slow-motion decline in the general state of this nation. A Mexican border that is effectively open. A national debt that climbs into unmanageable levels even as the economy is not nearly bad enough to justify massive deficit spending. A foreign policy that coddles America’s enemies and slights our allies. And of course the relentless demand to overturn Dobbs and require abortion to be legal without limitation throughout the land.

These are bad things, but they are things that are already happening. Harris’s administration would be predictably bad.

Trump is less predictable. There are some high-likelihood upsides, from the conservative point of view. Judicial appointments will go to people who respect the Constitution. Regulations will be cut where they can be. Taxes likely won’t go up. And the drumbeat of culture war will switch to a more palatable tempo. There are some less certain benefits, too. Trade protection, if you like that sort of thing, but passing it permanently requires Congress to like it, too. Maybe a better foreign policy? Depends what you think about Ukraine, I guess.

And then, the elephant in the room (so to speak), is the slim possibility that Trump will do something that would destroy the American republic.

If you rolled your eyes at that line, you’ve probably already decided that the probability of that happening is tiny — even zero. And if that’s where you come down on it, Trump probably looks like he offers more upside than down. But for conservatives inclined to be suspicious of Trump, the events of January 6 are strong confirmation that he is different from an ordinary Republican in at least one important way. The old partisan instincts are strong, but we also owe it to our country to use our rational minds, as well.

In the end it comes down, like so many complicated life choices, to weighing risks and rewards. 

America’s 250-year-old experiment in democracy will not come to an end this year, no matter who wins on Tuesday. But conservatives are left to choose between two candidates that do bear credible threats to that constitutional order. 

With Harris, the republic will be assailed by lawyers and bureaucrats, a continuation of the century-long trend in progressive governance that shifts power gradually away from the people and the elected branches and into the hands of unelected regulators and judges. With Trump, the threat is less certain but potentially more damaging. Had the January 6 rioters succeeded in their efforts, the republic would not have recovered in a generation — maybe a lifetime. But they didn’t succeed, and if your faith in the system is strong enough, then the risk of a recurrence may pale in comparison to the risk of four more years of progressivism. 

There’s not an easy answer to this question. In Joe Wheeler’s day, President McKinley represented an easy choice for conservatives who wanted sound money, trade protection, and a vigorous foreign policy. Trump has said he admires McKinley, but the differences in their temperaments could not be starker. Harris, on the other hand, has the establishment support and rich fundraising of a modern-day McKinley but uses it for a radical agenda that no one in either party in 1898 would recognize as American.

All conservatives can do here in 2024 is judge the probabilities the best we can, trust that the republic will persevere, and hope for a day when one party nominates a candidate that doesn’t require such fraught calculations.

Kyle Sammin is the managing editor of Broad + Liberty.