Republican Sen. Jeff Flake said Wednesday “you can’t continue to just remain silent” about President Donald Trump’s politics and behavior.
Conservative critics responded: “Good riddance”
Flake seems to have missed the memo. Americans elected Trump to shake-up the swamp, not advance the interests of establishment politicians.
The more do-nothing career GOP senators resign, the better for the president, the Republican party, and the country.
Flake blasted Trump during his announcement, invoking the 1950s demagoguery of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. “There is a tipping point. … I hope we’re reaching that tipping point,” Flake told NBC’s “Today.”
The establishment politician made the rounds of morning television news shows to talk about his decision not to run for re-election in 2018 and his impassioned speech on the Senate floor Tuesday, in which he said he could no longer be “complicit” with the Republican president.
“We are excusing undignified and outrageous and reckless speech and behavior as ’telling it like it is.’… That’s not right,” Flake said Wednesday on MSNBC.
Trump immediately fired back on Twitter —
The reason Flake and Corker dropped out of the Senate race is very simple, they had zero chance of being elected. Now act so hurt & wounded!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2017
He also contended that Flake and Corker stand alone, boasting in several tweets that he had gotten standing ovations at a Senate Republicans’ luncheon Tuesday at the Capitol.
Jeff Flake, with an 18% approval rating in Arizona, said "a lot of my colleagues have spoken out." Really, they just gave me a standing O!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2017
Flake cited the era of McCarthy, the Republican Wisconsin senator whose smear tactics alleging Communist infiltration ultimately led to his censure. In an op-ed column in The Washington Post, Flake quoted Joseph Welch, an Army lawyer, who stood up to McCarthy in a June 1954 hearing and demanded: “Have you no sense of decency, Sir?”
“It’s up to us to stand us and say, ’This is not acceptable,’” he told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Asked why others in the establishment haven’t yet done so, Flake said, “There is some fatigue about it.”
Of course, Flake stopped short of saying Trump should be declared unfit for office or impeached.
“The voters made their choice,” Flake said. “He was elected fair and square.”
Flake’s decision not to run has helped voters with their next choice — running him out of office.
The Associated Press contributed to this article