“I don’t know why anyone should be a member of the Republican Party.”

And no, I didn’t say that. Nor did Nancy Pelosi. Or Joe Biden.

Nope, those words were uttered by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower. As often was the case, Ike hit it right on the button.

As we head for the impeachment of lying, incompetent, man-child President Don Trump, it’s instructive to remember how frustrated Ike got with recalcitrant, narrow-minded members of his own party back in the ’50s. And descendants of those GOPers are sitting in the congress now, venting their bizarre defenses of Trump in ways reminiscent of the ways Republicans acted against the national interest during Ike’s administration.

The current crop of Republicans are offering up a terrible font of ideas for opposing impeachment. “He didn’t do it,” is often heard in defense of Trump’s phone call to Ukraine’s leader. The evidence is clearly otherwise. “If he did it, nothing came of it” is another trope. Except that he’s the president, not a grocery bagger. How about asking those Republicans this: If Barack Obama had done precisely what Trump has done, would they be defending his actions?

If any of them should answer “yes,” then we’ve gone back the ’50s and beyond. Beyond all the way to an alternative universe where partisanship doesn’t exist. (Is there such a universe anywhere? And how to we get there?)

To allow — or encourage — the brazen Trump to further his destruction of democratic ideals — the basis of our democracy — may not be a high crime or misdemeanor, but Republicans in the House and the Senate seem well into a head-long flight of permission for him to do just that.

Trump will be impeached by the Houses, for sure. It appears beyond hope the Senate will follow suit. There are no profiles in courage in the Republican Senate.

Ike apparently might understand that.