Not only have Republicans failed to put the country’s interests above their own and demonstrated a degree of moral cowardice that would horrify our Founding Fathers, they also have been excruciatingly short-sighted. They now chortle at the prospect that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will win the Democratic nomination. But before they pop the champagne corks, they should chat with Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff. The unimaginable can happen. Radicals can get elected, and the old tactics whereby one side could point to the other and holler “See! See how terrible!” do not necessarily work.

So let us imagine President Sanders, whose cheering crowds holler, “Lock them all up!” Let’s imagine an attorney general specifically tasked with prosecuting (not merely investigating) every senior member of the Trump administration. Imagine a White House that weighs in on cases in which its cronies are caught up in illegal schemes. Imagine a president who throws note takers out of meetings with foreign leaders, raids half the defense budget to set up a single-payer health-care scheme, and seeks help from the Kremlin for his reelection run in 2024.

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Whatever wrongs Trump has committed, whatever executive power grabs Republicans have ignored, now become weapons in the arsenal of a Sanders administration. By executive order, imagine what gun regulations and border security rules could be changed. Then think about the administration’s arguments to the Supreme Court that such actions are not reviewable because Article II lets the president do anything he wants.

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Since the Constitution, we are told, allows the president to do anything he deems in his interest to get reelected, wait for the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI and foreign governments’ intelligence services to be deployed against Republican opponents (and Democratic critics!). Since there is no limit on interference in regulatory enforcement actions, watch a Sanders administration direct the Justice Department to run rampant through corporate America, launching criminal prosecutions and breaking up companies at the behest of the White House.

After Republicans disabled the brakes (i.e., Senate confirmation) on dangerous appointees, Sanders could decide to fill his administration with radical and unqualified acting Cabinet members. He could replace retiring justices with appointees harboring radical views of the Constitution — and rely on current members to stick to their precedent demanding excessive deference to the executive. (Get ready for court packing as well.)

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None of this is beyond the realm of possibility. Not in the least. Having ceded executive power and, in effect, erased the impeachment clause, there may be little or no brake on what a Sanders administration might do. And, in one sense, who could blame the left for adopting the playbook the right wrote?

I do not know if a Sanders administration would engage in such actions, but if it is as radical as Republicans imagine, they should expect nothing less. Perhaps then it will dawn on them that setting fire to our institutions and eradicating accountability for the president was a fatal error — fatal to democracy and to the rule of law. By then, of course, it will be too late.