A diehard Democrat faced a dilemma after reading about House budget leader Nelson Dollar in the N&O. “Should we be helping him?” she wondered.

What caught her eye and caused her soul-searching was Dollar saying the Senate budget “makes it difficult to pay for…a 2 percent raise for state employees, additional money for teacher pay and protecting teacher assistants’ jobs.”

Just what a Democrat would want.

A similar dilemma faced a Democratic elected official in one of the state’s bigger counties. His county had a problem with a provision in a Senate bill. So he went to a Republican Senator from the county. The Senator got the provision taken out.

The official lamented: “I’d like a Democrat in that seat. But he’d be in the minority and couldn’t help us like that.”

Are we reduced to this? Do we focus on helping less-conservative Republicans prevail over more-conservative Republicans? If so, maybe we should make the best of it by registering unaffiliated and voting for moderates in Republican primaries.

The possibilities for mischief are limitless.