We Americans tend to be pretty good at noting the “firsts” we come across in life, both individually and culturally. We mark our kids’ first birthdays with happiness and usually a small cake the kid gets to dig into with both hands. Many parents are noting this year’s first day of school, albeit with a variety of challenges to that tradition. Most folks know that Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon.

But we are not so good at noting the “lasts” in our lives. Who, for example, was the last man to walk on the moon, any idea? Well, because I am a space and astronomy nut, I know that it was Gene Cernan on the Apollo 17 mission, but I’m betting most of my kind readers didn’t know that name off the top of their heads.

You may well remember your own firsts — your wedding day perhaps. But do you remember your lasts? Almost certainly you do not remember the very last time you were picked up by your mom or dad, and why would you? After becoming a toddler and wanting to be a big boy or girl, you don’t remember that final time you were scooped up in loving arms and carried around, and then tucked warmly into bed.

Which, of course, brings me to Mitt Romney.

Yet another great article in Colorado Politics yesterday put me in this contemplative mood. That article reviews the GOP convention, but it begins with a review of where the Republican Party was just four years ago. Colorado Politics reporter Joey Bunch noted that in that seemingly far off time, Ted Cruz was the Colorado delegation’s choice for president, and horrible things were said about Donald Trump. And yet just this past Monday, Colorado’s own U.S. Rep. Ken Buck took to the metaphorical stage to pledge all 37 of Colorado’s convention delegate votes to Trump to, as Buck put it, “keep America Great again.” As a grammar zealot, well, nevermind…

I’ve often written about my belief in the vital importance of personal honor and my contempt for hypocrisy. I’m tempted to yet again leap atop my rickety soapbox of idealism to condemn things like the use of the White House for a political event, the secretary of state breaking with decades of precedent to make a political speech while standing on foreign soil. I’d like to rant about that for the first time in 160 years, the GOP decided to skip crafting a party platform and simply declared undying fealty to Trump, a person unfamiliar with the concept of undying fealty. But I don’t think I will today. Rather, I’m going to talk about what I hope is not a forgotten last, the Republican Party nominating a person of honor and integrity in the person of Mr. Romney.

There have been quite a few stories written in recent months about the idea that Trump has fundamentally and permanently changed the Republican Party. I am not prescient enough to know if that is true, but there are disturbing trends. The normalization of dishonor I previously wrote about covers things like paying off mistresses and still claiming the “family values” moral high ground, and much more in the same vein. But are those changes permanent? I sure hope not, but I worry that they are.

We have seen people like Ted Cruz, whose wife and father Trump personally attacked, go from strongly denouncing Trump as immoral and vile to embracing him as the GOP’s guiding light. We have also seen similar behaviors from our own U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner and many others. So the real question has become whether the new “Trump” GOP — focused only on getting and keeping power — has permanently rejected the concepts of honor and integrity in exchange for scaring people into voting for them, or if this a brief and hopefully self-correcting period that will be recalled with at least embarrassment, and hopefully shame, in years to come?

Back in 1976, I remember being thrilled (after the honesty debacle that was the Nixon presidency) to see two truly honorable men — Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter — running for our nation’s highest office. More recently we saw Barack Obama (a man whose eight years in office resulted in zero criminal indictments) run against two men of great honor and integrity, John McCain and the aforementioned Romney. Depending on how you count, the first four years of the Trump administration has resulted in at least 34 and as many as 215 indictments, including at least six gentlemen who were well within Trump’s personal orbit. Oh, and don’t forget that the Trump golf courses and companies funnel millions of tax dollars into the family pockets each year.

So, is Mitt Romney to be remembered as the last honorable Republican candidate? If so, that would be a pity, for it would likely doom the GOP to the ash heap of history. Recall that the Republican Party was birthed from the wreckage of the failed Whig Party of the 19th century. If history truly repeats itself, the modern GOP may find itself as insignificant in the 21st century as the Whigs were in theirs.