It seems likely that Cotton’s military background helped inform this decision. In an eerily prescient August 2015 Politico piece titled “What I Learned at War,” Cotton explained, “As soldiers advance up the chain of command, we expect them to show moral courage, which can be even more difficult. It’s easy to stay silent when a commander proposes a disastrous plan or when others engage in misconduct, but that’s not what we expect from soldiers. That’s why leaders like Drill Sergeant [George] Norton always said, ‘Do the hard right over the easy wrong.’ Just like my dad always counseled the ‘do-right rule.’”

Of course, Cotton is a crafty strategist as well as a committed constitutionalist and he went about doing the right thing in a very shrewd, strategic fashion. Odds are that a frontal assault on Trump’s power grab would have failed, rendering him politically impotent (if not unemployed). By biding his time and husbanding his conservative credibility until just the right time, Cotton dealt the greatest blow possible to Trump’s worst ambitions…

Now, there’s plenty of criticism to go around for Cotton (and McConnell) when it comes to failing to kick Trump when he was down. In the wake of his presidential defeat, the Georgia Senate losses, and the Jan. 6 insurrection (which led to his second impeachment), Republicans had the power to ensure Donald Trump could never again hold federal office. We may all soon rue their missed opportunity. Neither Cotton nor McConnell rose to the occasion on that day.

Heroes aren’t perfect. Cotton deserves credit for doing the right thing when America absolutely needed him to. While Hawley and Cruz put pandering and their presidential ambitions ahead of their country, Cotton put first things first. And for this, he deserves our gratitude.