I don’t know how Sen. Mike Lee can make it through a single day without a can of Lysol bathroom spray. His face is always radiant, but it’s his brown nose that ruins it all. The smell must be overwhelming.

Now, you’d think that a man who spends the better part of an hour every morning scrubbing his face, applying a generous coating of carnauba wax and meticulously buffing his cheeks and forehead would worry about soiling his choir-boy image. But it doesn’t seem to have crossed Mike’s mind that you can’t choose to embrace cesspool living and keep that well-scrubbed reputation. Despite his clean look and pressed shirts, Lee’s not about integrity—he’s about appearances.

With all the credentials of a fine constitutional lawyer and the appearance of a decent family man, Lee has everything going for him—everything, that is, but the morality that a Utah senator should possess. It’s extremely disturbing that someone with his intelligence and education still chooses to align himself with the worst creatures of the D.C. swamp. That’s what tells us who he is—his only loyalty is to whomever and whatever he perceives as expeditious for his political career.

Let’s face the facts: Lee’s been the ultimate GOP sycophant, trying to figure out which public figures are most likely to be going places and making sure that, no matter how outrageous, he’s there to beat his drum. Where there’s dirt in politics, he always seems to sniff it out and be a part of it.

We must not forget Lee’s commitment to finding some legal angle to corrupt the 2020 presidential election. It was pathetic and sickening to watch as he pandered to the aims of a traitor. And his support for a traitor puts him squarely in that same classification.

Right up to that moment when the GOP more-or-less collectively acknowledged that their man had lost, Mike Lee was one of those leading the idiot charge to keep Trump illegitimately in power. It was enough to make any worthy citizen cringe in embarrassment. He was one of the last cheerleaders for Trump, continuing his back flips and fight songs into the night, long after the home team had been trounced.

I can only guess that Mike Lee’s wife is reluctant to kiss him, after that schnoz of his has been up so many butts. Contaminated by Donald Trump, Clarence Thomas and, most recently, Ron DeSantis, it is really a miracle that Mike hasn’t gone to Brown-Noser heaven with a fatal naso-enteric infection.

Amazingly, and despite his ridiculous worship of the great unclean, a recent Dan Jones and Associates poll showed that 47% of Utahns either strongly or somewhat approve of Mike Lee’s performance as their senior senator. I don’t get it. After offending his fellow Mormons, by describing a hopeless reprobate, rapist, fraudster and traitor as a modern-day Captain Moroni, any self-respecting voters should have deserted Lee.

It’s a bit hard to follow Lee’s logic. After all, there are defining differences: Moroni didn’t have his family doctor fake a diagnosis of bone spurs in order to escape military service, but chose to lead the valiant and decent in a terrible conflict. Then again, we can’t be sure—maybe that was one of the details wisely omitted from that book.

Donald Trump, now drowning in both civil and criminal legal cases, just doesn’t seem like the Captain Moroni type. What’s hard to understand is why Mike Lee is incapable of showing support for Trump without gushing his ridiculous accolades of veritable worship. It’s not normal, and it makes Lee guilty by association. We must remember the adage about “birds of a feather.”

Then, there’s Lee’s worship of Justice Clarence Thomas, long accused of sexual harassment, who could never have been confirmed were it not for an off-balance Republican Senate ignoring the nothing-to-gain account of Thomas’s abuse of Anita Hill. Recent revelations about Thomas’s inappropriate, ongoing acceptance of lavish gifts from Texas billionaire Harlan Crow have shown that Thomas is not fit to serve our nation. As if those gifts, in clear violation of ethics, were not enough, Thomas has also failed to disclose income and non-arm's-length transactions that, at worst, may have tainted his judgment in cases involving the rich and their corporate interests.

Then there’s the matter of his wife, Ginni Thomas, who has garnered over several years nearly two-thirds of a million dollars in income from a far-right think tank, and who was an active sympathizer in Trump’s quest to corrupt the 2020 election. Since a SCOTUS justice must avoid even the appearance of wrongdoing, Thomas’s behavior is an impeachable offense against the American people and a serious blow to the credibility of the highest court.

Inexcusable? Yes. But Mike Lee doesn’t merely excuse Justice Thomas’s corruption. No, he has to come in with “guns a-blazing,” defending the louse and going OTT describing Thomas as an American “hero.” Lee is shameless and pathetic.

In the latest of Lee’s prostitutive brown-nosing, he’s actively hedging all his bets. While paying the Donald his required more-than-token lip service—and, apparently, being deathly afraid of Trump’s power to hurt those who oppose him—Lee understands that the two-time popular vote loser may still have a longshot at a return to the White House. At the same time, he needs to demonstrate to DeSantis that he’ll be there, should DeSantis win the nomination. Sickening.

Utah, don’t you think it’s about time to rid our state of its morally-bereft senior senator? Sure, one can notice the “garment lines” as he sits in his Mr. Mac’s suit, but Lee has supported the worst foes of our democracy and Utah is, by association and representation, hurt by his presence.

In the next election, let’s make sure that Mike Lee is not on the ballot.

The author is a retired novelist, columnist, and former Vietnam-era Army assistant public information officer. He resides in Riverton with his wife, Carol, and the beloved ashes of their mongrel dog.