Some get hurt leaping from the Trump train

“The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed, for the wrong reason.”

— T.S. Eliot, “Murder in the Cathedral”

From the start of the national Rorschach test that is the Donald Trump campaign, pundits and political scientists have wondered: Will Trump ever go too far? And how much can a political party absorb before it’s members begin to abandon ship.

We may have witnessed the beginning of that answer last week, as a video surfaced featuring Trump bantering with professional hanger-on Billy Bush about one of the benefits of stardom: the ability to touch women without consent or consequence.

At long last, Republicans who’d struck with Trump through thick and thin — Mexicans as rapists and murderers; John McCain: not really a war hero; banning Muslims; and attacks on women — had finally had enough.

Among them: Nevada Reps. Joe Heck (who is running for U.S. Senate) and Cresent Hardy (who is running for re-election). Heck, in fact, didn’t just withdraw his previous endorsement of Trump, but called for the nominee to step down.

For Heck, there was virtually no upside. Democrats gave him no credit for doing the right thing. (“What took you so long?” Or, “You’re just trying to save your campaign among females!”) Conservative Republicans threatened to punish him at the polls. (“How dare you abandon our nominee and help Clinton?”) But Heck’s political divorce from Trump also insulates him at long last from a key Democratic attack — that he was putting party loyalty above common decency.

Not all Republicans were as bold as Heck and the basket of defectors who have also renounced their support of Trump. House Speaker Paul Ryan condemned Trump’s remarks and essentially told embattled members of his caucus to save themselves, but failed to leap from the Trump train. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell withdrew into his shell, declining to discuss the matter at all. And Reince Priebus — who must at this point be the most miserable man in American politics — condemned Trump’s remarks but was later forced to say, “We have a great relationship with them. And we are going to continue to work together to make sure he wins in November.”

Meanwhile, one of the Republican party’s former chairmen, ex-Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, illustrated the state of the GOP post-debate on Sunday with the most appropriate imagery possible: a rapidly rising mushroom cloud.

How ironic that the only Republicans comfortable today are those refuseniks who said from the start that Trump was neither a conservative nor a Republican, and withheld their support. They alone are free of any responsibility for ongoing damage to the party.

But millions of members of the GOP base sail on with Trump.

Among them is Tony Perkins, president of the evangelical group Family Research Council Action, who is standing by Trump regardless of the candidate’s boasts about attempting to violate the seventh commandment: “As I have made clear, my support for Donald Trump in the general election was never based upon shared values, rather it was built upon shared concerns.”

One would think someone such as Perkins — ostensibly steeped in religious stories — would recognize the Faustian bargain that support for Trump entails. Perhaps Perkins forgot the real last temptation, the one from Matthew’s gospel, when the devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor, and offered it all to the Son of God in exchange for his worship.

Jesus refused. If only all of his followers had the same ability to resist the promise of temporal political power.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at 702-387-5276 or SSebelius@reviewjournal.com.