I served with Jim Jordan in the House and remember him as a good, decent conservative. He chaired the Republican Study Committee, a predecessor of the Tea Party Caucus, when I was a member. I've thought of Mark Meadows the same way: He helped make the health care bill that passed the House a couple of years ago more conservative and sensible than when it was first introduced. While I'm miffed that Republicans apparently are no longer the party of lower deficits and free trade, there have been times that no one could question the conservative bona fides of these two men.

This is not one of those times. Jordan and Meadows belong to a generation of conservatives who supposedly believed that it was Congress's job to hold the executive branch accountable. Former Tea Party Rep. Mick Mulvaney lamented in 2016 that Republicans were unfairly criticized for applying their standard to President Obama: "When we do it against a Republican president [instead], maybe people will see it was a principled objection in the first place," he said, according to Tim Alberta's American Carnage. But they're not doing it. Donald Trump is in the Oval Office, Mulvaney is his acting chief of staff, and Jordan and Meadows are no longer defenders of the law but apologists for a president who abuses it.