TRENTON – Internally, Governor Phil Murphy is getting nibbled on both sides of the budget veto question.

On the one side he’s getting advice that he the public doesn’t care about the inside baseball of the budget and that the optics of a shutdown will hurt him the same way it ultimately hurt then-Governor Jon Corzine in 2006. The bulk of that option looks like this.

On the other side, he’s getting a do-or-die argument.

He’s getting a dig in or else you blow it argument.

He needs to get off the sand now and charge the mound lest he get relegated to irrelevant happy land for the remainder of his term, the more aggressive side argues.

Speaker Vincent Prieto (D-32) beat the tag team of Governor Chris Christie and Senate President Steve Sweney (D-3) on Horizon last year. That’s the template, part of the Governor’s brain trust argues.

He needs to play chicken, the same way his hero, President John F. Kennedy, did with the Russians in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Trying to get a hook in the starry eyed governor from Massachusetts, you’re Jack, Guv, and Sweeney and Coughlin are Khrushchev and Castro, the pro package veto side says. Let’s do this.