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I’ve spent some time in recent days reading the words that Republican senators have written and spoken about what America means to them.

“America is different,” Marco Rubio has said. Ben Sasse has written: “Jefferson called America a ‘light unto the nations.’ Lincoln said that we are ‘the last, best hope of earth.’” Josh Hawley, shortly after joining the Senate, told his colleagues, “We must put aside the tired orthodoxies of years past, and forge a new politics of national renewal. ”

My column today is a plea to those Republican senators: Please, listen to your own words about the distinctive greatness of this country. America is better than President Trump and his grubby attempts to put his own interests before the national interest. You — and only you, the Republican members of the Senate — have the ability to end this nightmare. Now is the time to begin distancing yourself from Trump, for the country’s sake and, in the end, your own.