The idea that Senate would remove an impeached president for the first time in American history when the president’s own party holds the majority — and that this would happen in such a sharply polarized moment, when the president’s own-party approval remains around 90 percent — seems fanciful. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen or can’t happen.

It could and it might. If it does, it will be because sufficient numbers of old-line, non-populist Republican senators come to see it as their last stand — their last opportunity to act as a force for the public good rather than an enabler of a criminal enterprise cheered on by a mob motivated by ignorance and malice.

Will the party fold, falling into line behind Trump, as it has so many times over the past four years? Probably. But it won’t if its members recall that their job isn’t to do whatever the voters demand regardless of whether it’s reasonable. Their job is to listen to those demands and then do what they consider right and good for the country and the Constitution they’ve taken an oath to preserve, protect, and defend.