Ross K. Baker

Opinion columnist

In his classic study of the Senate, “U.S. Senators and their World,” Donald Matthews described the norms and folkways that guided those elected to what often is called the world's "greatest legislative and deliberative assembly.” One of those norms was what Matthews referred to as “institutional patriotism” — a readiness to defend the Senate against incursions from the other branches of government and a determination to fend off all attacks, from whatever source, on the chamber in which they serve.

There was an element of self-interest in this high-mindedness: A degraded and disrespected Senate would be a blot on the careers of all senators. Their reputations were intimately linked with how the American people looked upon the Senate.

If any remnant of institutional patriotism remains in the hearts of senators, especially Republicans with qualms about President Donald Trump’s brazen end run around the constitutional responsibility of Congress to decide how American taxpayers' money is spent, they need to come out of the shadows. They need to support a resolution blocking the president’s action in numbers sufficient to override his veto.

Read more commentary:

Republicans are starting to stand up to Trump. But will they reject his emergency?

ACLU on border wall 'emergency': We'll see you in court, President Donald Trump

Donald Trump's emergency declaration is an attack on democracy

The House votes Tuesday on whether to support Trump's emergency declaration, and a Senate vote will follow in coming days. Senators have more skin in this game. There are only 100 of them (compared with 435 House members), so each owns a 1 percent share in the Senate’s reputation. It will take no conspicuous act of courage for the vast majority of Senate Democrats to support a resolution of disapproval; that’s a foregone conclusion. It is Republicans who must think hard about how much of their constitutional responsibility they want to cede to the president.

Senators who embrace Trump's specious reasoning that a crisis exists on the southern U.S. border might avoid offending constituents who support him and escape some political risk. But to go along with his arrogation to himself of responsibilities that the framers of the Constitution bestowed on you is not institutional patriotism. It is institutional treason.

Trump message is Congress doesn't matter

There has been a tendency for certain Republicans who are on the way out the door to speak bravely against the president’s actions. That was certainly true of former Sens. Bob Corker and Jeff Flake. It now appears that Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, having announced he will not seek another term, has joined that group of whom Shakespeare would have written, “Nothing in life so became them as the leaving of it.”

It is up to GOP senators who will remain after the 2020 election and even those who are up for re-election to put the president on notice that he cannot degrade the institution in which they serve, and bear responsibility, both individual and collective, for upholding its integrity.

Trump’s action in declaring a state of emergency in defiance of Congress is a message to the legislative branch of government that its will doesn’t matter. Unchallenged, the president’s action will stand as a monument to congressional impotence. The House expression of disapproval will be understandably dismissed as a partisan act by the Democratic majority. It is up to the Senate and specifically to Republican senators of principle and conscience to defy this act of dubious constitutionality.

Reject the 'emergency' despite political risk

They should do this in the almost certain knowledge that the Supreme Court, as presently constituted, will not ride to their rescue. Rarely in modern times has an institution of the federal government faced a frontal assault on its relevancy. This is such an occasion.

I don’t dismiss the political risk that Republican senators would face from voters in their states who are devout believers in the president. This is not, however, just a quibble over dollars and cents; it is a struggle over a foundational principle of American government. Short-term self interest might dictate that it is easier to just go along with Trump’s unilateral change in their job description as set forth in the Constitution. But those Republicans who resolve not to participate in the degradation of the Senate will reject his tampering with what is the birthright of all who take their oath to that document.

Republicans concerned about the relevance of the Senate and anxious that it might be degraded by going along with a presidential whim must join with the House to block Trump's power grab and protect the constitutional role of Congress.

Ross K. Baker is a distinguished professor of political science at Rutgers University and a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter: @Rosbake1