Republican defenders of Donald Trump kept asking last week: Why bother impeaching the president when he's already heading out the door? The point was never just to get him out of the White House. It was to hold him accountable, administer justice and deter all future presidents from ever considering a repeat of Trump's reckless, democracy-destroying course.

U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis of Illinois, who upheld the Electoral College certification vote yet voted against a historic second impeachment after he was chased into hiding on Jan. 6 by an insurrectionist mob, went to great lengths in a CNN interview Thursday to defend his position. Like other Republican lawmakers, Davis repeatedly sidestepped questions about the need to send a clear deterrent message and to administer justice for Trump's mob incitement. The danger of this retreat to blind partisan loyalty is that it aligns Republicans like Davis and Rep. Ann Wagner of Ballwin with a president who inspired cop killers and traitors.

Davis, speaking with CNN's Brianna Keilar from his home town of Taylorville, walked up to the edge of advocating the punishment of Trump but then walked it carefully back. What started as an eloquent defense of due process devolved into a confusing mishmash of GOP talking points.

"I'm a Republican because I believe in personal responsibility," Davis said. And yet all words that followed veered sharply away from anything that would hold Trump personally responsible for the death and destruction on Capitol Hill prompted by his remarks.

Keilar asked if Davis agreed with Rep. Lynn Cheney of Wyoming, who stated: "The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled this mob and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the president."

Davis responded, "I don't want to see an impeachment process hijacked by politics, regardless of how you feel about the president." Politics? He's talking about a fellow Republican — the third most powerful House Republican whose father is a conservative icon.

Then Davis flip-flopped: "I believe he did foment discontent" by giving extreme right-wingers hope that if they could derail the Electoral College certification process, "that (Trump) would be elected for another four years. And that was not going to happen." But when it came time to hold Trump accountable, Davis said, "I voted against impeachment because the process was rushed." Besides, he added, "President Trump was held accountable because he lost the election."

Wrong. The election held Trump accountable for the mountain of lies, bullying and mismanagement that preceded Nov. 3 — not for the insurrection he led two months later.

Davis is hardly alone in expressing these skewed talking points. This represents House Republicans' best defense for their indefensible cowardice in letting Trump off scot-free for what he did. This from the party that, to quote Davis, believes in "personal responsibility."

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