Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., spoke on the Senate floor on Tuesday with a moral clarity we have rarely seen among his fellow elected Republicans — and never from GOP leadership on Capitol Hill. He simultaneously denounced the president, revealed the moral cowardice of his party and summoned fellow citizens to stand up for their democracy. It was quite a speech.
He began by noting, “At a moment when it seems that our democracy is more defined by our discord and our dysfunction than it is by our values and our principles, let me begin by noting a somewhat obvious point that these offices that we hold are not ours to hold indefinitely. We are not here simply to mark time.” Unfortunately, he is surrounded by Republicans who have put getting along and getting reelected ahead of every other principle.
Speaking more in sadness than in anger, he gave voice to what many Americans have been feeling:
“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 — I mean 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. . . .
“We must never regard as ‘normal’ the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country — the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions; the flagrant disregard for truth or decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have all been elected to serve.
“None of these appalling features of our current politics should ever be regarded as normal.”
But of course they have been by Republicans in both houses, in elected offices around the country, among donors and operatives. It was to all of them plus voters that Flake seemed determined to remind that when we fall prey to partisanship and careerism “we dishonor our principles and forsake our obligations. Those things are far more important than politics.” And he spoke directly to and about the president:
“If I have been critical, it not because I relish criticizing the behavior of the president of the United States. If I have been critical, it is because I believe that it is my obligation to do so, as a matter of duty and conscience. The notion that one should stay silent as the norms and values that keep America strong are undermined and as the alliances and agreements that ensure the stability of the entire world are routinely threatened by the level of thought that goes into 140 characters — the notion that one should say and do nothing in the face of such mercurial behavior is ahistoric and, I believe, profoundly misguided. . . .
“Acting on conscience and principle is the manner in which we express our moral selves, and as such, loyalty to conscience and principle should supersede loyalty to any man or party. We can all be forgiven for failing in that measure from time to time. I certainly put myself at the top of the list of those who fall short in that regard. I am holier-than-none. But too often, we rush not to salvage principle but to forgive and excuse our failures so that we might accommodate them and go right on failing — until the accommodation itself becomes our principle.”
He explained in solemn tones why President Donald Trump is inimical to our democratic tradition:
“When a leader correctly identifies real hurt and insecurity in our country and instead of addressing it goes looking for somebody to blame, there is perhaps nothing more devastating to a pluralistic society. Leadership knows that most often a good place to start in assigning blame is to first look somewhat closer to home. Leadership knows where the buck stops. Humility helps. Character counts. Leadership does not knowingly encourage or feed ugly and debased appetites in us.”
Flake is no interventionist, but he is an internationalist and warned against the kind of “America first” hooey that Trump spouts. We cannot abandon the post World War II order, he warned:
“The implications of this abandonment are profound. And the beneficiaries of this rather radical departure in the American approach to the world are the ideological enemies of our values. Despotism loves a vacuum. And our allies are now looking elsewhere for leadership. Why are they doing this? None of this is normal. And what do we as United States senators have to say about it?”
He explained the dilemma for what he called “a traditional conservative who believes in limited government and free markets, who is devoted to free trade, and who is pro-immigration.” That person has a narrow path to nomination for office as a standard bearer of the party. He spoke optimistically about the chances for his party’s revival:
“We were not made great as a country by indulging or even exalting our worst impulses, turning against ourselves, glorying in the things which divide us, and calling fake things true and true things fake. And we did not become the beacon of freedom in the darkest corners of the world by flouting our institutions and failing to understand just how hard-won and vulnerable they are.
“This spell will eventually break. That is my belief. We will return to ourselves once more, and I say the sooner the better. Because to have a healthy government we must have healthy and functioning parties. We must respect each other again in an atmosphere of shared facts and shared values, comity and good faith. We must argue our positions fervently, and never be afraid to compromise. We must assume the best of our fellow man, and always look for the good. Until that days comes, we must be unafraid to stand up and speak out as if our country depends on it. Because it does.”
In praising Flake, GOP lawmakers only underscored the problem. Why have they not been speaking out? Why are they allowing a president to indulge in self-enrichment, bigotry, lying and abuse of power?
Maybe Flake is right, but all signs point to the end of the GOP he described. He and Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., have no home in the new GOP, and neither do legions of Americans. Hope lies, I would suggest, in marginalizing Trump and Trumpism. To do that a center right party or a centrist party (combining moderates of both parties), I suspect, will be needed. There are lots of impressive people to lead such an effort — Flake and Corker, to name just two.
