Look at it this way: The Senate was never going to reach a two-thirds supermajority to remove President Trump from office. By refusing to call witnesses, by advancing a frightful theory of unlimited presidential power, by endorsing the right of presidents to enlist foreign powers, by misstating evidence and making scurrilous attacks on everyone from House manager Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) to former vice president Joe Biden, Senate Republicans have demonstrated the lengths to which they will go to hold on to raw power and to bolster a deeply unfit president who does not know right from wrong.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) aptly outlined the stakes: “The president seems to be emulating a French king who said, ‘L’etat, c’est moi.’ ‘The state, it’s me,' " she said. “No, Article II does not say you can do whatever you want. The Constitution does not say that. ... I don’t know how they can retain their lawyer status in the comments that they are making.” She added, "I just pray that the senators will have the courage and the ability to handle the truth instead of blocking the truth from themselves in the decision, and from the American people. "

The insistence on not merely acquitting but acquitting without the semblance of a real trial and with a new unlimited theory of presidential power will, at the very least, be clarifying for voters and the judiciary:

• Roberts has seen just how power-hungry and intellectually dishonest the administration is and how it has played the courts (e.g. claiming in court that Congress can only enforce subpoenas through impeachment while making the opposite argument in the Senate). We hope that when cases centering on exaggerated claims of executive immunity reach the high court, Roberts will lead the justices with a strong majority to reject and discredit Trump’s dangerous views on executive power.

• The public should understand fully that the Republican Party has become the authoritarian party. Instead of limited government, separation of powers and self-rule, Republicans embrace — when it suits their fancy — unlimited executive power, executive domination of the other branches and selling our democracy to the highest foreign bidder. They have mutilated the Constitution so they can claim its broken remains. They have been willing to sacrifice an ally to Russian domination, a signal to the Kremlin and others that we are feckless friends. Voters should be forewarned that neither the legislative branch nor executive branch can be entrusted to this crowd.

• Americans who actually adhere to conservative beliefs should give up the fantasy that the GOP can be rescued. In not only electing and defending Trump but also shredding long-held constitutional principles, it poses a threat to the rule of law, equal justice under the law and the American creed (“All men ...”). Their energies are best spent in the short run trying to nominate and help elect a centrist Democrat and then creating a principled center-right party from the ground up.

• The country needs to have a robust discussion about the electoral college, the Senate filibuster, the defects in the impeachment process, firewalls between the White House and the Justice Department, the power to indict sitting presidents, the War Powers Act, statutory emergency powers (which Trump has abused) and voting rights. (When Republicans hear that presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has a long list of executive orders ready to go, perhaps they will reflect on the path to tyranny they have paved.)

If nothing else, this has been a painful lesson that the Founding Fathers underestimated the power of the presidency and overestimated the good faith of its occupants, leaving us ill-equipped to fend off authoritarians and their docile enablers. The system we inherited is not suited to extreme tribalism and rampant dishonesty. It is not simply (or even primarily) a problem about money in politics; it is the deformity of our institutions and demolition of our democratic norms that must be the next president’s concern.

Jennifer Rubin writes reported opinion for The Washington Post