WASHINGTON — Hours before the Senate would vote on two articles of impeachment, Texas Sen. John Cornyn accused Democrats of trampling on the Constitution in service of a “crusade” to oust President Donald Trump.

In a floor speech Wednesday, he characterized the allegations as well short of the standards required to remove a president, particularly without bipartisan support and as Trump seeks reelection.

Unlike a handful of GOP colleagues, Cornyn expressed no dismay over the actions at the heart of the impeachment: a pressure campaign aimed at prodding Ukraine to announce a corruption probe targeting a political rival, Joe Biden, using U.S. military aid as leverage.

“Certainly the House managers did not meet the high burden required to remove the president from office, effectively nullifying the will of tens of millions of Americans, just month before the next election,” Cornyn said, who previously has called the effort “insane.”

“I hope our Democratic colleagues will finally accept the results of this trial, just as they have not accepted the results of the 2016 election,” he said.

The outcome of the trial is not in doubt. A two-thirds majority of senators is required to convict. Republicans control 53 of 100 seats and none have signaled an intention to vote for conviction. Still, a few have chastised Trump for his behavior. Others, among them Texas’ junior senator, Ted Cruz, have rallied behind Trump, conceding no hint of wrongdoing and vehemently accusing Democrats of pursuing a case that is factually baseless and constitutionally inadequate.

“Impeachment is an extraordinary remedy,” Cruz said during his 10-minute slot on Tuesday ahead of the vote. "It’s not designed for when you have political differences or policy differences. It’s designed for when the president crosses the constitutional threshold.”

Cornyn is seeking a fourth six-year term in the fall, and Democrats hoping to unseat him have aggressively sought to turn his stance on impeachment to their advantage.

“Senator Cornyn has proven that he is uninterested in evidence and testimony and instead will continue to put political loyalty ahead of doing his job,” one of those Democratic contenders, M.J. Hegar, said earlier in the trial.

When Senate Republicans shot down demands from Democrats to call witnesses at the trial, Texas Democratic Party chair Gilberto Hinojosa said they “shamelessly... chose to support McConnell’s cover-up over upholding their constitutional oath.”

Cornyn spokesman Drew Brandewie noted that during the Senate trial, lawyers played snippets of testimony from 13 witnesses at the House impeachment hearings, and the trial record included 28,000 pages of documents. Democrats sought testimony from witnesses Trump ordered not to cooperate with the House, and to subpoena documents the administration refused to turn over to the House.

But even as Democrats insist that acquittal will give Trump and future presidents license to abuse their power, Cornyn argued that conviction in a “politically motivated impeachment sets a dangerous precedent.... If successful, this would give a green light to future congresses to weaponize impeachment to defeat a political opponent, for any action, even a failure to kowtow to Congress’s wishes.”

He previewed his floor remarks on conservative talk radio, telling host Hugh Hewitt earlier Wednesday that the case presented at trial “was simply half-baked. ...In the private sector, if lawyers had presented a case the way the impeachment managers did, they’d be sued for legal malpractice. It was just a disaster from the start, and so the president will be justly acquitted.”

On the Senate floor, Cornyn asserted that “they’ve failed to bring forward any unassailable evidence” of a high crime or misdemeanor of the sort required for impeachment.

Like nearly all GOP senators, Cornyn voted against calling any witnesses or demanding any documents from the White House, State Department or Pentagon that prosecutors sought, including testimony from Trump’s chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, and former national security advisor, John Bolton.

Trump blocked testimony from those and other key players and issued a blanket refusal to turn over administration documents.

Democrats accused him of stonewalling. And they accused his allies in the Senate of enabling a cover-up, willfully blinding themselves to evidence that would have been even more persuasive than what the House did manage to collect despite the obstacles.

But impeachment, Cornyn said, should be used only “when absolutely necessary…. We should be extraordinarily vigilant to make sure that the impeachment power does not become a regular feature of our differences, and in the process, cheapen the vote of the American people.”

He ascribed partisan motives to Democrats, accusing them not only of trying to remove Trump — whose successor would be his hand-picked vice president, Mike Pence — but of flipping control of the Senate so that Democrat Chuck Schumer would replace Republican Mitch McConnell as majority leader.

Trump is the third president to be formally impeached. Richard Nixon resigned to avert impeachment over Watergate. No president has been removed from office.

“I’ve done my best to listen intently to both sides… and I’m confident in saying that President Trump should be acquitted, and not removed from office,” Cornyn said.

As for the implications on his reelection prospects, Cornyn told The Dallas Morning News off the Senate floor that “This isn’t just about this president. This is about the presidency itself and whether we trust the American people to choose their own leaders.

“If my Democratic friends who are running for the Senate have different views, I’d love to engage with them on the campaign trail on that. I think the Texas voters would be with me and not with this idea to remove a president from the ballot just months before the next presidential election.”

In fact, he said, the assault on Trump’s presidency has backfired.

“Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats are doing everything they can to see that he’s reelected,” he asserted.