Bob Corker’s lame duck status has enabled him to find the guts to say what he ought to have said all along.

The Tennessee Republican is leaving the U.S. Senate at the end of the year. He hadn’t been overly candid about Donald J. Trump until just before he announced his decision to call it a career.

Now, though, he’s talking about what he perceives to be a “cult” developing with his political party. The cult is devoted blindly, according to Corker, to the president who has seized the party by the throat, has throttled it and has bullied intraparty foes incessantly.

Corker isn’t alone among Republicans who have discovered their courage in the waning months of their political career. He joins Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, who has finally — finally! — called out the president by name for the manner he has chosen to govern the nation.

I fear that Corker’s cult description is far more accurate than even he would prefer. Cult leaders traditionally imbue their “followers” with fear over political retribution if they cross the man/woman at the top of the pecking order.

That just might explain the Republican reluctance to challenge the continual stream of lies and assorted nonsense that fly out of Trump’s mouth. Indeed, the president’s lying mouth has kicked into overdrive since his summit with Kim Jong Un, the North Korean despot who gave up virtually nothing but got a ton of concessions from the president who proclaims himself to be a “great negotiator.”

Why don’t they call the president out for his effusive praise of Kim, the tyrant who murders his foes, his family members, starves his fellow Koreans and threatens the world with nuclear annihilation? He has broken previous promises and kept his people in the dark — quite literally — while he lives in relative opulence.

Is it that cult thing to which Sen. Corker has referred? If only more members of his party would speak as candidly and honestly about what is happening within the halls of power.