PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

In this space, I usually write from my own perspective, sometimes prompted by what various political commentators say.

After all, I am a political junkie, having been in and around politics for more than 40 years, so staying a bit involved after retirement three years ago is not necessarily unusual.

As I have watched the impeachment process unfold over the last few weeks in Washington, D.C., one particular fact impresses me. It is this. The more we learn through the process, the most Senate Republicans will face a huge decision regarding President Donald Trump when, as is likely, impeachment articles are forwarded to the Senate from the House.

As facts keep flowing out about the over-the-top behavior, illegal behavior of Trump, his normal allies in the Senate will have to decide whether to remain unflinchingly loyal to him.

To illustrate what is at stake for Senate Republicans, there is no better way to do so than to reprint excerpts from a column by Washington Post writer Michael Gerson.

Here is what he wrote under this headline:

If Republicans stay loyal to Trump, they’ll be implicated in the moral decay of our politics

“When it come to President Trump, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between a political strategy and a nervous breakdown. His tweeted trash talk, his meandering stream of consciousness media availabilities and his shameless embrace of sleaziness are not the signs of a healthy mind. Trump’s followers might eventually look up to find they were actors in someone else’s delusion.

“But Trump’s recent self-defenses at least clarify his ambitions as an ethicist. Concerning the Ukraine scandal, the president is not seeking forgiveness for a failure in judgment or even trying to change the subject. He boldly asks Americans to accept that his actions — pressuring a foreign power to investigate a domestic political rival — were good and proper.

“’I don’t care about [Joe] Biden’s campaign,’ Trump insists, ‘but I do care about corruption.’ And there was ‘tremendous corruption with Biden.’”

“Trump is effectively setting a new standard of political morality and requiring his supporters to defend it. He is asking elected Republicans, in particular, to agree with his claim that a practice uniformly viewed as corruption in the past is actually an example of fighting corruption now. That is the little thing, the small thing, which Trump demands of his followers: To call hot cold. To call black white. To call wrong right.

“Trump holds no objective, abstract beliefs about the meaning of justice or duty. He approves of things that help him and disapproves of things that hurt him. There is no other moral grounding. Yet, he makes his assertions with utter confidence.

“The president currently claims that asking a dependent government to dig up dirt on a political rival is a good thing, even when it involves the implication of extortion. He makes no argument about why the traditional definition of corruption has changed. He feels no need. The shift is in his interest. And that is enough to require the assent of his followers.

“Elected Republicans, as a result, are looking mighty uncomfortable. Mouthing the words that Trump wants from them — saying that corruption is really anti-corruption — would mean sounding like a fool and surrendering what remains of their political honor.

“Republicans are being called to follow their leader down a relativist rabbit hole. Trump is not only asking them to accept his arguments on policy matters such as building a wall or provoking a trade war. To be loyal foot soldiers, they must affirm that morality means what Trump says it means — even when it violates their clearest instincts. They know, deep down, that if a Democratic president had asked France or China for help in destroying a prominent Republican rival, they would be in a fever pitch of outrage. But, in the Trump era, this isn’t supposed to matter anymore. Consistency means nothing. Principle means nothing. Character means nothing. It only matters who wins.

“Many Republicans would dearly like to say: What Trump did is wrong, but it doesn’t rise to an impeachable offense. There are two problems with this approach: First, Trump will not regard this as evidence of sufficient loyalty; he demands full approval. And, second, I imagine that most of the founders would regard Trump’s act — inviting a foreign country to influence an American election — as the definition of an impeachable offense. If their intent means anything, it means Trump is seriously corrupt.

“So we are left with positions that can’t be reconciled. Trump honestly seems to have no moral objection to what he did. His opponents are left sputtering, ‘But this has always been seen as serious corruption!’ The president simply doesn’t care. And, if his GOP supporters remain loyal, they will be further implicated in the moral decay of American politics.”