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opinion

Ted Morton is an executive fellow at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, a former minister in the Alberta government, and a teacher of undergraduate courses in U.S. politics.

After enduring six months of presidential primaries – much longer than the NFL, NHL or NBA playoffs – U.S. voters are now facing a lose-lose choice in November. For most, the only thing worse than a President Hillary Clinton would be a President Donald Trump. The former is disliked and distrusted by more than half of Americans. The latter's negatives are even higher, and for good reasons.

"The Donald" is the most offensive personality to walk across the stage of American national politics since segregationist George Wallace in 1968. Mr. Trump is arrogant, ill-informed, impetuous, mean-spirited, petty, reckless … the list goes on and on. Mr. Trump is uniquely unqualified to be the next president of the United States and about two-thirds of Americans know it.

The Republican Party should not waste its time, money and reputation trying to elect Mr. Trump – he is unelectable. The more resources they put behind Mr. Trump, the more they risk damaging the Republican brand, not just in 2016, but for the next decade. That's the bad news for the GOP. The good news is that there is an exit ramp off this political dead end.

The GOP leadership needs to recast 2016 as a mid-term election. They need to accept the fact that Ms. Clinton is going to be president for the next four years, and embrace the checks and balances that the U.S. constitution provides. They should forget Mr. Trump, and focus their efforts on maintaining their current majorities in both the House and the Senate. In mid-term elections – years in which the incumbent president does not face an election – the party that does not occupy the White House typically picks up seats in the Congressional elections.

During the Obama administrations, Republicans won 63 new seats in 2010 to take control of the House and then 9 new seats to form a majority in the Senate in 2012. During the Bush administration, in 2006, the Democrats won control of both chambers, winning 31 new seats in the House, and 6 in the Senate.

If Republican leaders can persuade American voters to accept the mid-term election narrative, it would turn their Nov. 8 choice inside out. Rather than having to choose between a candidate they loathe and one they fear – the lose-lose proposition – it becomes a win-win. Cast your first vote against Mr. Trump. Cast your second vote against Ms. Clinton by voting for your Republican senate and congressional candidates.

At a minimum, you then could have a GOP majority in one or both houses of Congress to act as a watchdog on any future Clinton lapses on policy or ethics. More positively, you might even see a rebirth of the bipartisan co-operation of the 1990s that distinguished the Bill Clinton presidency. (Okay, okay. Not so likely. That was Bill and this is Hillary.)

But the Dump Trump option does not mean ignoring the millions of Americans who voted for him. There is a deep malaise in the blue-collar layers of the U.S. middle-class – the "Reagan Democrats" who switched their allegiance to the Republicans when the Democratic Party started taking their support for granted.

The GOP must rebalance its Main Street-Wall Street coalition by paying more attention to the concerns of Main Street. This means revisiting multilateral trade deals that outsource American jobs and insource cheap foreign labour. It means addressing an immigration system that clearly is not working and reforming "affirmative action" programs that discriminate against middle-class whites in hiring and university admissions.

The sooner the Republican leadership commits to this mid-term election narrative, the greater the chance of success. They would be doing U.S. voters a real favour. And they would also be doing a favour for America's friends and allies – starting with Canada.

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