In announcing that he won’t be running for another term in the Senate, Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake gave a powerful speech. It wasn’t just well-written and well-delivered, Flake poured his soul into the speech, calling out the Republican Party in a voice quivering with emotion.
It’s easy to argue that Flake’s words were diminished because, like Bob Corker, he was delivering this words while packing his bags. But it’s not Flake who lost standing. It’s the Republican Party.
Flake may be the one who is surrendering his seat, but he’s doing so because the rest of the GOP has surrendered already. He’s not leaving the Senate because he and his fellow senators have been waging the good fight against Donald Trump’s “regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals,” he’s leaving because they’re not fighting. He’s leaving because the United States Senate has already become not just a rubber stamp for Trump, but because …
It must also be said that I rise today with no small measure of regret. Regret, because of the state of our disunion, regret because of the disrepair and destructiveness of our politics, regret because of the indecency of our discourse, regret because of the coarseness of our leadership, regret for the compromise of our moral authority, and by our -- all of our -- complicity in this alarming and dangerous state of affairs. It is time for our complicity and our accommodation of the unacceptable to end.
But complicity and accommodation are not going to end. Flake’s speech—beautiful as it was—didn’t cause his fellow senators to rise in support. It only caused them to squirm uncomfortably in their seats. It may have sounded like a clarion call to action, it was really the final playing of taps for the Republican Party.
The idea that there’s a division in the Republican Party was true. But it won’t stay true. Trump is now the party.
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Jeff Flake is in no sense a progressive, or even a moderate. A decade ago, he’d have been at George W. Bush’s elbow, supporting every tax cut and demanding more. But Flake is clearly shocked at the distance his party has moved in the space of a single Senate term, completing a march into a party that revels in racism, sexism, and simple hatred.
Reckless, outrageous, and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as "telling it like it is," when it is actually just reckless, outrageous, and undignified.
Flake tried—he really tried—to deliver a speech that could not be ignored. To remind the people around him that there are stakes beyond their own election.
But what happens if ambition fails to counteract ambition? What happens if stability fails to assert itself in the face of chaos and instability? If decency fails to call out indecency? Were the shoe on the other foot, would we Republicans meekly accept such behavior on display from dominant Democrats? Of course not, and we would be wrong if we did.
When we remain silent and fail to act when we know that that silence and inaction is the wrong thing to do -- because of political considerations, because we might make enemies, because we might alienate the base, because we might provoke a primary challenge, because ad infinitum, ad nauseum -- when we succumb to those considerations in spite of what should be greater considerations and imperatives in defense of the institutions of our liberty, then we dishonor our principles and forsake our obligations. Those things are far more important than politics.
But silence is what he got. What he will get. From Senate Leader Mitch McConnell meekly shuffling along at Trump’s side to House Speaker Paul Ryan willing to answer any question but the one he’s asked, what the Republicans have demonstrated is silence. Also known as cowardice.
Sen. Flake may have quoted from Abraham Lincoln in his speech, but he might better have quoted U. S. Grant: "There are but two parties now: traitors and patriots.”
And this was just another day where that became more clear.
