Republican Charlie Dent is a former US congressman from Pennsylvania who served as chairman of the House Ethics Committee from 2015 until 2016. Joe Lockhart, a Democrat, was White House press secretary from 1998-2000 in President Bill Clinton's administration. He co-hosts the podcast "Words Matter." Dent and Lockhart are CNN political commentators. The views expressed in this commentary are their own. View more opinion on CNN.

(CNN) For the past several months, leading Congressional defenders of President Donald Trump have used shifting talking points to oppose the impeachment and then removal of the President. First, it was a perfect call, then there were no firsthand witnesses, then there was the "no harm no foul" defense that the Ukraine aid was eventually released.

Finally, after the Senate Republicans voted against calling any witnesses, the defense of some GOP members was that, while Trump's behavior was inappropriate, the President's removal was not warranted. According to Sen. Lamar Alexander, the House managers proved their charges.

The underlying reasoning was that even with Trump's bad behavior, the binary choice of acquittal versus removal made it impossible for Republicans to side with the Democrats.

But in those shifting rationales, the Republicans have raised a third option they may not have anticipated. The Senate on Thursday can and should move to censure the President and use the Republicans' own public statements and floor speeches as the basis for the language condemning Trump's behavior.

Joe Lockhart

Now for those who say it would only be symbolic, we'd point out that only one President in our history, Andrew Jackson, has been censured, and it was so important to him he spent three years getting the censure overturned. A censure vote only takes a simple majority, not the two thirds needed for removal. It would put Republicans firmly on the record on the Senate floor on the question of whether the President abused his power and acted inappropriately.