"Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

Liz Cheney said those words on June 9, 2022. At the time, she was serving as Wyoming’s at-large member of the United States House of Representatives and as vice chair of the U.S. House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack (insurrection?) on the Capitol.

Cheney’s words of courage and honor — rare then in a Republican solon and still rare today — would be her political undoing. She would go on to lose the Wyoming primary, a first step to reelection. Her opponent, Harriet Hageman, would win the primary in a landslide (66 percent of the vote) and the 2022 election in a landslide (68 percent of the vote). Talk about a fickle electorate. Fast forward to today.

Trump-world is filled with nothing but bad news that somehow seems to become good news for Trump. And if this good-bad news continues into 2024, it could culminate in bad, bleak news for the United States of America — Trump as the Republican Party’s candidate to recapture the White House.

And if he should win? That would be a worst-worst case scenario. Perhaps Retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, Trump’s one-time chief of staff, has the best answer to that question: “God help us.”

The United States of America cannot let that happen. To make sure it doesn’t, Republican lawmakers must use every legal power tool in their political toolbox to ensure that it doesn’t.

To me the solution is simple — but incredibly difficult and demanding of courage: every Republican serving in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives must put country before party and make the case to their constituents that Donald J. Trump is unfit to occupy any elective office in the United States of America. For the sake of the nation — and the honor and courage for which the GOP has been known in the past — the elected holders of those offices must show some spine. It’ll cost many of you who do that. For many of you it would mean the end of your political career. Case in point: Liz Cheney, as noted above. But look not at what she lost, but what she gained.

I believe that in the over-the-long-haul writing of American history, she will stand out as a lawmaker who demonstrated courage — “grace under pressure” Hemingway dubbed it — and the nicest sense of personal honor. She was deservedly recognized with a 2022 Profile In Courage award.

Also honored that year was Russell “Rusty” Bowers, a fellow Republican and House speaker in Arizona. His award citation notes that: “Following the 2020 presidential election, Rusty Bowers, a pro-Trump Republican, resisted intense pressure from Trump and Rudy Giuliani and refused to go along with an illegal scheme to replace Arizona’s legal slate of electors with a false slate of electors who would elect Trump.”

Finally add to the 2022 award recipients Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat and Michigan secretary of state, and Wandrea’ “Shaye” Moss, then an elections department employee in Fulton County, Georgia. Both failed the Trump test by refusing to employ illegal shenanigans to help keep Trump in office.

Despite his ongoing lies; illegal actions; disdain for the law and the basic tenets of the Constitution; lack of civility and good manners; and apparent absence of any sort of moral compass and underpinnings, many GOP solons continue their fealty to Donald J. Trump. Why? Is it out of fear — if so, of what?

I recognize that the congressional lawmakers I cited above are the cutting edge of our representative democracy. They are indeed elected to serve their constituents. However, when they raise their hand and take their oath of office, I would hope and pray they do not turn in their consciences.

In the course of my 82 years as a citizen of the United States of America, I cannot recall — and I can recall the events leading up to the resignation of President Richard Nixon — any greater danger to the republic than that posed by Donald Trump and the cronies he would pull into power with him. And there would be retribution against those whom he perceives as having acted disloyally in opposing his personal ambitions.

You men and women in the positions of power within the GOP find yourselves on the horns of a dilemma. Do you choose conscience or constituents?

Let me quote a few words of John F. Kennedy, penned in Chapter I, Courage and Politics, in his “Profiles in Courage”: “These are the stories of the pressures experienced by eight United States Senators and the grace with which they endured them — the risks to their careers, the unpopularity of their courses, the defamation of their characters, and sometimes, but sadly only sometimes, the vindication of their reputations and their characters.”

GOP leadership: your choice — and a tough one. Courage or constituents? Do you close the door to the White House to Trump now or help him enter? Either way, now or later, Donald Trump will go away. You’re under pressure. Do you have the grace? Do you have the spine? Can you put Trump aside and select a candidate, man or woman, who is showing the qualities and character needed to be our nation’s chief executive?

They are out there.

As Americans, when we gather on Thursday to thank God for the favors showered on our nation, let us say a prayer for courage in our elected officials at all levels in our representative government.