The only (sort of) viable GOP option throws in the towel

Mark Sanford- the one Republican challenger to President Trump's renomination I could have remotely imagined myself supporting at the Iowa Caucuses in a couple of months- has dropped out of the race.

For all his apparent penitence, former Congressman Joe Walsh has too much to live down after a political career in which he was essentially Trump Lite to be a credible option for me, and former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld- whether you call him a libertarian or a liberal- is a guy I just have too many ideological issues with to support. As much as I hope the Democrats will nominate a moderate who can actually beat Donald Trump, I can't see myself caucusing with them. So I guess 2020 will be the first presidential election year since I've lived in Iowa that I'll be staying home on caucus night.

For me, at least, the price of political integrity is a sojourn in the political wilderness. It's worth the price. I'll be able to look at myself in the mirror when all those conservative journalists and politicians are trying to get everybody to forget that they supported Donald Trump. And the agenda of even the moderate Democrats seems to me to be too socially destructive for me to join them.

Unless the nominate somebody completely off the wall, or the person they nominate goes completely off the wall, I'll be voting (unhappily, to be sure) for the Democrat in 2020.

But at least I'll be able to shave in the morning more easily than a lot of folks will.