What Republicans won’t do

Democrats are being tested in the coming weeks over impeachment. Republicans have already failed their integrity exam. How much more seriously they embarrass themselves and insult the country’s intelligence is up to them. Indeed, the political tragedy of our time is not that an individual of such low character like Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States. It is that he has so thoroughly corrupted a major political party to drive the bulk of its elected officials to choose loyalty to him over decades-old principles.

We are under no illusion that enough Senate Republicans are open-minded enough to consider even the possibility that Trump has committed impeachable acts. Instead, Senate Republicans tasked with acting as jurors in an impeachment trial seem ready to follow their House brethren — dismissing Ukraine facts in favor of misdirection, witness-smearing and

Russia-spread conspiracy theories.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham seeks documents on Joe Biden’s 2015 actions in Ukraine (which were consonant with U.S. and international policy) and Hunter Biden’s role on the board of Burisma. In short, he’s effectively launching the investigation Trump was shaking down Ukraine for.

Ted Cruz demands the whistleblower, whose confidentiality is protected under law, be subpoenaed.

The lone Republican senator seemingly open to considering the reality of Trump wrongdoing is the man who, in retrospect, got it right in 2012 in warning about Russian aggression — Mitt Romney. Where are Ben Sasse, Susan Collins, Joni Ernst, Lisa Murkowski, Martha McSally, Cory Gardner and Lamar Alexander, all of whom have shown flickers of sanity on this and other presidential misdeeds?

Bueller?