Congressman Jeff flake, the Arizona Republican Senator, has gone head to head with President Trump in a critical speech in the Senate. He stated on Tuesday that he would not look for re-election in 2018, proclaiming on the Senate floor that he would "never again be complicit or silent" with the president's "reckless, preposterous and undignified" conduct.
Mr. Flake made his statement in a remarkable 17-minute discourse in which he criticized the president as well as the Republican party establishment.
He mourned the "easygoing undermining of our vote based goals" and "the individual assaults, the attacks against standards, freedoms, and foundations, the outrageous disregard for truth and fairness." He said that it has turned out to be the 'new normal' in American politics during the reign of Mr. Trump.
Mutiny within the Republican party?
Sen. Flake's speech has proved a trend that is going on within the Republican party recently. Senator John McCain had given a speech in Philadelphia last week, criticizing the "silly, spurious patriotism" that he saw surpassing American values. Former President George W.
Bush, in another speech, mourned: "We've seen patriotism mutilated into nativism."
In any case, Mr. Flake, picking the Senate floor for his furious condemnation of the president, seemed to issue an imminent crisis to his Republican friends in the Senate and his party. "We usually say that kids are watching," he said. "All things considered, they are. What are we going to do about that? When the future generation asks us, 'Why didn't we say something? Do something?' What do we tell them?"
"This is not new normal"
Without specifying Mr. Trump by name, Mr. Flake, 54, reached in on the president's strategies, his conduct, and that of his assistants. During his term in Washington, Mr. Flake epitomized an old-line conservatism.
He urged for limited government, cutting taxes, and for a strengthened free trade.
Such policies have all been compromised in Trump's revised version of conservatism. The representative addressed all these points in a book he released in August, "Inner voice of a Conservative," that presented President Trump in a negative shade.
"We should quit imagining that the destruction of our values and the behavior of some people in Washington is normal," Mr. Flake said. "They are not ordinary. Rash, ludicrous and undignified conduct has turned out to be overlooked. When such conduct exudes from the highest point of our administration, it is something unique. It is a risk to our government and our country."