A 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle only achieves verisimilitude when it is complete and from a distance. When a piece falls out of place, or you creep close enough for the lines to emerge, the illusion fades. What was an idyllic meadow, or famed work of art, is now a jagged approximation. The political system works the same way. It is only clean and precise when things are predictable and less is known. Up close and over time, the rough edges grow obvious and the elegance gives way to complicated and frail realities. What were thought to be cohesive principles to tie politicians to platforms and voters are actually matters of convenience, ugly when viewed in detail.

Last week, Republicans in the House and Senate revealed themselves to be off-kilter, merely an estimation of something resembling constitutionalism, when a majority in both chambers voted to uphold President Trump’s declaration of a National Emergency over the southern border. Most Republicans showed they have few if any fixed principles as they decided to grant the President power to re-appropriate the federal budget to achieve his desired political ends. A party that ran for eight years to curtail Barack Obama’s executive over-reach proved, once and for all, the problem was not executive over-reach, but Barack Obama’s party affiliation.

I am sure some will argue, as Ben Sasse (R-NE) did when he decided to vote for the President’s decision, the situation at the border is enough of an emergency to grant Mr. Trump latitude under the law of the land. It is a technical argument in search of a principle it never finds, at least outside re-election possibilities. Of the Senate Republicans who are running in 2020, only one, Susan Collins (R-ME), voted against Mr. Trump’s declaration.* Mr. Sasse has made a great show of constitutional fealty, but when the breach opened, he was not to be found.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) was even more mendacious. Tillis penned a Feb. 25 opinion piece in The Washington Post. He claimed:

It is my responsibility to be a steward of the Article I branch, to preserve the separation of powers and to curb the kind of executive overreach that Congress has allowed to fester for the better part of the past century. I stood by that principle during the Obama administration, and I stand by it now…There is no intellectual honesty in now turning around and arguing that there’s an imaginary asterisk attached to executive overreach — that it’s acceptable for my party but not thy party.

Well, that stand lasted a little more than two weeks. Surely his descendants will sing songs of the Tar Heel Tower’s courageous fortnight of resistance.

There were some exceptions, of course. Rob Portman (R-OH), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Rand Paul (R-KY) matched their rhetoric with their actions. They are to be praised for their integrity and their willingness to confront a president who still commands the loyalty of three-fourths of his partisans. Perhaps that is the real corruption of the Republican Party.

Long ago I lost hope that our leaders would lead instead of follow, at least on the most critical issues of our age. Executive Power, which tends to accumulate instead of re-boot, carries over. Like the Democrats who now rue their decision to pull the filibuster off some judicial nominations, Republicans will in the future bemoan this choice. Emergencies, unlike clear principles, can be found everywhere if one looks hard enough.

*Granted, one could argue that Collins’ vote was also a political necessity given Maine’s politics, but at least her calculation cohered with stated Republican principles.