So why does Trump engender such fear and loyalty? The most defensible reason for sticking with him may be that he delivers for his base.

One timely example of this came on Friday, when Trump became the first president to address the National Right to Life March in Washington, D.C., in person.

As someone who is sympathetic to this humanitarian cause (yes, that is my belief), I can understand the temptation conservatives may feel to want to reward Trump’s symbolic nod to our values by looking the other way on his transgressions.

That helps it spread.

Even if supporting a cause you believe in justified ignoring an impeachable act, there are two conservative insights that, I think, explain why this is still a tragic mistake. The first is that ideas have consequences (the title of conservative scholar Richard Weaver’s most famous book), and the second is that culture is upstream from politics (an observation that was popularized by conservative Andrew Breitbart).