It makes increasingly perfect sense why President-elect Donald Trump wants congressional term limits. And it makes just as much sense why his putative Republican helpmates on the Hill will overlook short-term political expediency and take the lead in rebuffing him.

Atop Trump’s “drain the swamp” campaign platform was the promise to push restrictions on time served in the House or Senate, although he’s not specified how short the maximum congressional tenure should be.

“We’re going to put on term limits, which a lot of people aren’t happy about, but we’re putting on term limits,” he said during his “60 Minutes” interview right after the election. “We’re doing a lot of things to clean up the system.”

It’s easy to understand the first, obvious reason this would remain high on his stated agenda: The public overwhelmingly supports the idea. Two weeks before Election Day, the Rasmussen Reports poll found 74 percent support for congressional term limits among likely voters, with the rest evenly split between opposed and undecided.

A possible secondary rationale comes with an implication of disingenuousness, but evidence to support such speculation grows by the day: Trump wants to increase the strength and power of the executive branch to another new height, and weakening the legislative branch through term limits is one way to accomplish that.