Spare a thought for the republicans.
No, not those Republicans, who cling ever more tenuously to the quaint notion that their political allegiance is to something that could still be called the Grand Old Party. We don't currently feel like sparing a thought for them, even though - apparently lacking the hint of such a thing themselves - they could do with one.
![US President Donald Trump announcing US withdrawal from Paris climate change accord.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170605003543im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/i/p/2/a/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwizw7.png/1496416931878.jpg)
No. We're talking about the Australian republicans who once lost a referendum about switching from a Governor-General to a president.
You may recall that a young Malcolm Turnbull was so upset at the time he accused then-prime minister John Howard of breaking his nation's heart.
Turnbull has moved on to doing the same thing himself, and republicanism hasn't notably gone anywhere since.
Don't expect things to improve.
You may have noticed that Pippa Middleton, who is the sister of Kate, Duchess of Cambridge (who in time might find herself the consort to a King), is in Australia on her honeymoon with a chap called James Matthews.
The Sydney papers had an attack of heavy breathing.
![James Matthews and Pippa Middleton - wearing THOSE espadrilles - in Sydney on Wednesday.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170605003543im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/h/c/c/z/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwizw7.png/1496415430394.jpg)
"Pippa, sister of the Duchess of Cambridge, who smiled for cameras at Sydney Airport, wore a chic white blouse, blue jeans and the same espadrilles she wore on Wednesday but she's going to have to go more casual wherever it is she's heading in the Northern Territory, where it is peak tourist time," one of the big dailies gushed.
It could have been the 1950s. We're still ga-ga over the royals, apparently - even those who aren't actually royal, but who are related to someone who wasn't royal until she married one.
If we're not ready yet to abandon the chance to publish breathless prose about a non-princess's espadrilles, it seems unlikely we're quite ready to go to the barricades in support of another republican referendum.
The sealer, however, may be the now-confirmed knowledge that the leader of the world's most significant republic has opted for inaction just before the world is drowned by rising sea levels.
A republic? A president?
Pippa's relatives sound positively delightful, thank you.
Originally published on The Sydney Morning Herald as A republic with a president? We'll take Pippa's in-laws just now, thanks.