It’s probably too late to change candidates to a new one, so they’re stuck with Vance. Their best hope would be to parachute in someone charismatic and with appeal to a plausible “silent majority” of conservative-leaning voters à la Reagan, or at least someone who can keep his skinsuit on properly when in public. Given the way that from 2016, if not the Tea Party era, onwards, Republicans have either been primaried out of politics for being “RINOs” or else drunk deeply of the Kool-Aid and embraced the spiral of radicalism to keep up, there aren’t many plausible candidates who haven’t abased themselves.

So the Republicans would be thoroughly screwed, at least if they didn’t have the Electoral College, the Supreme Court, gerrymandering, voter suppression, the backing of billionaires and all the dirty tricks Putin and Musk between them can muster. As it stands, they may have to fight dirtier than they planned, with uncertain results.