Who might deliver us from this national train wreck? Who could restore a sense of balance to the Senate trial so that, whatever its outcome, it doesn’t feed Trump’s false narrative of victimization and populist rage? There’s one obvious answer: Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and custodian of what remains of his party’s moral and political balance.

History is knocking on Romney’s door. This is his moment to step away from a president who holds him in contempt and to speak for principle — by insisting that the Senate conduct an actual trial and weigh the House’s allegations that Trump abused power and obstructed Congress. This simple stand for an impartial trial (if backed by several more brave Republicans) would restore sanity to this process. Trump would probably still be acquitted, but it wouldn’t be in a firestorm of partisan rage…

You’re probably sick of quotes from the Federalist Papers, but try just one more, from Alexander Hamilton about the Senate’s role in impeachment: “Where else than in the Senate could have been found a tribunal sufficiently dignified, or sufficiently independent? What other body would be likely to feel confidence enough in its own situation, to preserve, unawed and uninfluenced, the necessary impartiality between an individual accused, and the representatives of the people, his accusers?”

Read that passage carefully, Sen. Romney. Hamilton is talking across the centuries to you.