Why Jeff Flake Didn t Run Again
Jeff Flake, a Violent Trump Critic, Will Non Seek Re-election for Senate
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WASHINGTON — Senator Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican who has tangled with President Trump for months, announced on Tuesday that he would not seek re-election in 2018, declaring on the Senate floor that he "will no longer exist complicit or silent" in the face up of the president'due south "reckless, outrageous and undignified" behavior.
Mr. Flake made his announcement in an extraordinary 17-minute oral communication in which he challenged non only the president just besides his political party's leadership. He deplored the "casual undermining of our democratic ideals" and "the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institutions, the flagrant condone for truth and decency" that he said had become prevalent in American politics in the era of Mr. Trump.
The announcement appeared to bespeak a moment of decision for the Republican Party. Final week, Senator John McCain, the senior senator from Arizona, spoke in Philadelphia, denouncing the "half-baked, spurious nationalism" that he saw overtaking American politics. Old President George W. Bush, in even so another oral communication, lamented: "We've seen nationalism distorted into nativism."
On Tuesday morn, Mr. Trump had renewed his attacks on another critic in the Republican Party, Senator Bob Aspersion of Tennessee, saying he "couldn't get elected domestic dog catcher in Tennessee." Mr. Corker, appearing more weary than aroused, said the president "is debasing our country."
But Mr. Flake, choosing the Senate floor for his fierce denunciation of the president, appeared to issue a directly challenge to his colleagues and his party.
"Information technology is often said that children are watching," he said. "Well, they are. And what are nosotros going to exercise nigh that? When the side by side generation asks us, 'Why didn't you lot practise something? Why didn't you lot speak upwards?' What are we going to say?"
Without mentioning Mr. Trump by name, Mr. Chip, 54, took direct aim at the president's policies, notably his isolationist tendencies, but too his behavior and that of his aides. In his fourth dimension in Washington, Mr. Flake embodied an old-line conservatism. He avidly pitched smaller government, spending cuts and an end to home-district pork-barrel projects, merely likewise supported free trade, engagement with the globe and an openness to immigration.
Those positions stood in marked contrast to Mr. Trump'southward inwards-looking, anti-immigration nationalism. The senator had already touched on such themes in a volume he published in Baronial, "Conscience of a Conservative," that was highly critical of the president. In his oral communication, he was at turns somber and passionate.
"We must stop pretending that the degradation of our politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal," Mr. Chip said. "They are not normal. Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has go excused and countenanced as telling it similar it is when it is really just reckless, outrageous and undignified. And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else. It is unsafe to a democracy."
As he spoke, Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, Mr. McCain and Mr. Corker sabbatum listening on the Senate flooring. Mr. Corker had jousted with the president only hours before.
"Isn't it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldn't get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus!" Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Tuesday morning, fearing that Mr. Aspersion's vow to oppose any tax plan that increases the federal debt could imperil his tax push.
Mr. Corker snapped back, "Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president."
"I don't know why he lowers himself to such a depression, low standard and is pejorative our land," Mr. Aspersion said in a CNN interview, suggesting that he would soon convene hearings to examine the ways Mr. Trump "purposely has been breaking down relationships around the world."
"It's unfortunate that our nation finds itself in this place," he added.
After the speech, Mr. McConnell praised Mr. Flake and said he regretted the senator'south conclusion to leave. "We take simply witnessed a speech from a very fine human, a man who clearly brings high principles to the office every day," the leader said.
Just privately, some Republicans were growing angry at the displays of disunity from Senators Flake and Corker as the party was trying to come up together to pass a major overhaul of the tax code. Only minutes before Mr. Fleck's address, the president had been in the Capitol for lunch with Senate Republicans and a give-and-take about tax reform.
The announcement did delight Republican officials in Arizona and Washington, who believe that they now accept a better chance at retaining the seat.
Mr. Fleck's private polling had steadily get worse this year as he intensified his criticism of Mr. Trump. His firm stand against the president had alienated Republican voters, but his long, bourgeois track record dissuaded Democratic voters in the state from coming to his side. 1 poll showed he had merely an xviii per centum blessing rating amidst Arizona residents, and a survey that the senator conducted last month led some of his ain allies to conclude that he could not win a Republican primary, according to multiple officials directly familiar with the situation in the weeks leading upwards to Tuesday'southward speech.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House printing secretary, said that she had not spoken with Mr. Trump about the senator's determination merely that she was not lamenting the announcement.
"Based on previous statements and certainly based on the lack of support that he has from the people of Arizona, information technology's probably a proficient motion," she said.
She said history would remember Mr. Trump for his achievements and the strong economy that he was presiding over, "not some piffling comments from Senator Corker and Senator Chip."
At home in Arizona, Mr. Flake was facing threats from both the right and the left. His chief primary challenger, Kelli Ward, an osteopathic physician and a former state senator who ran unsuccessfully against Mr. McCain final year, kicked off her entrada final calendar week with two conservative luminaries — Laura Ingraham, the radio host, and Stephen M. Bannon, Mr. Trump's former chief strategist — at her side.
"Steve Bannon adds another scalp to his collection," said Andy Surabian, a senior adviser to the Great America Brotherhood, a Bannon-aligned group that has endorsed Ms. Ward. "This is a direct issue of the political pressure put on Jeff Flake over the last several months."
On Tuesday, Breitbart News, the website that Mr. Bannon oversees, reported his reaction to Mr. Flake's proclamation as defiant: "Our movement will defeat you in primaries or force you to retire."
Now, a race that had been expected to fall along familiar establishment-versus-insurgent lines, with Mr. Flake pitted against Ms. Ward, has been diddled broad open. Mainstream Republicans believe that Ms. Ward volition be overwhelmed by a flood of other candidates. Representative Paul Gosar, a conservative firebrand, and former Gov. January Brewer, for case, could enter the race.
But there is considerable incertitude among establishment Republicans, too. Most political party leaders advise Representative Martha McSally, a former Air Force pilot, would be their most formidable contender to take on Representative Kyrsten Sinema, the likely Democratic nominee. Simply some Republicans privately say the safer course is for Ms. McSally to wait for the ailing Mr. McCain to vacate the seat and eventually ascend to the Senate via engagement.
To many conservatives who support Mr. Trump, Mr. Flake was an especially desirable target. Few in the Senate had spoken more candidly about their misgivings with Mr. Trump, kickoff as a candidate and then as president. He had particularly elicited conservatives' ire with his volume, in which he equated Republicans' acceptance of Mr. Trump as their nominee to a Faustian bargain.
Mr. Trump himself encouraged a primary challenge to Mr. Flake, calling him "a non-factor" and "WEAK on borders," while lauding Ms. Ward on Twitter.
What Mr. Scrap's retirement made articulate, though, was something potentially much more meaning than an private senator'south standing in the angry and restless bourgeois motility. Information technology suggested that under Mr. Trump, the Republican Party has piffling room for voices that dissent from the president's crass fashion of politics and his polarizing calendar.
Mr. Flake's decision to step downwardly was, in a sense, a tacit admission that crossing the president had put him in political peril. But in an interview in Phoenix this month, he said he had no regrets and always knew that crossing the president would be dangerous politically. He reiterated that sentiment on the Senate flooring on Tuesday.
"We're not here to but marking time," the senator said. "Sustained incumbency is certainly not the bespeak of seeking function, and at that place are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles. Now is such a time."
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/us/politics/jeff-flake-arizona.html
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