“To Trump, or Not to Trump”

To Trump, or not to Trump, that is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler in the land to suffer
The tweets and twaddles of outrageous baseness
Or to take arms against an orange menace
And, by opposing…do what? To Trump, to run—
that’s it, and by a run we mean: a fight
Against a termagant spewing every lie
that flesh is heir to—’tis a confrontation
not lightly to be missed. To Trump, to run—
To run, perchance to win. Aye, there’s the rub,
For in that realm of Trump what screams may come
When we have shuffled off decency’s limits,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes our disarray of so long life.
For who would bear the Whips and scorns of Reince,
Ted Cruz’s wrong, John Kasich’s contumely,
The pangs of Rubio, the Jeb’s delay,
The insolence of Boehner and the spurns
The patient movement of the pro-life takes,
When he himself might say, “to hell with it!”
As a bare Trumpkin? Who would Congress bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary House,
But that we dread a nation under Trump,
A walled and bitter country from whose bourn,
All immigrants turn back, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those shills we have,
Than fly to moguls that we know not of.
Thus conscience doth make Sasses of us all,
And lest the native hue of Constitution
be spray-tanned o’er by the bleak sheen of Trump
Let enterprises of the rightmost crew
With this regard their principles hold high,
And keep the name of faction. (Soft you now,
The fair Fiorina. Nymph, in thy Super PACs
Be all our sins remembered.)

Alexi Sargeant is a junior fellow at First Things.