Wall Street Journal (Editorial)
October 25, 2017
There is a familiar Washington irony in the praise that the press corps and Democrats are heaping on Jeff Flake for his speech Tuesday announcing that he won’t seek re-election to the Senate in 2018. The same crowd criticized Mr. Flake as a heartless libertarian until he opposed Donald Trump. But no matter, the Arizonan has still done his party and maybe his cause a public service.
The first service is making it possible for Republicans to retain the Arizona Senate seat. Mr. Flake struggled to win election in 2012 and he’s never built a strong state profile. His approval rating is so low that national Republicans feared he was unlikely to win a primary, much less hold the seat against a Democrat. Republicans believe they can hold the seat for the party but not for him, so he is taking one for the team.
Mr. Flake’s departure means that other Republicans have room to jump in against Kelli Ward, the Steve Bannon acolyte who lost to John McCain in 2016. Ms. Ward, an osteopathic physician, is famous for calling a public hearing to address constituent concerns that the plumes behind jets are an attempt to poison the public. Her first reaction to news about Mr. McCain’s cancer diagnosis was that he probably wasn’t long for the Senate. She is an odds-on loser if she wins the GOP nomination.
But Mr. Flake is mainly getting huzzahs because in announcing his departure he denounced Donald Trump. “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,” Mr. Flake thundered.
“And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else: It is dangerous to a democracy. Such behavior does not project strength—because our strength comes from our values. It instead projects a corruption of the spirit, and weakness.” He added that “I will not be complicit,” though he is hardly the first to note Mr. Trump’s unpresidential behavior.
Making a virtue of necessity is not uncommon in politics, and it is easier to “not be complicit” when you aren’t running for re-election. But Mr. Flake is right that far too much of Mr. Trump’s rhetoric is crude, undignified and patently false.
As we’ve pointed out many times, the impulsive narcissism of Mr. Trump’s mean tweets aren’t bursts of PR genius. They are by and large politically destructive acts that hurt his ability to persuade and accomplish his policy goals. Voters are already showing political combat fatigue, as his 40% approval rating suggests.
The more important part of Mr. Flake’s speech was his description of the GOP’s divide over ideas: “It is clear at this moment that a traditional conservative who believes in limited government and free markets, who is devoted to free trade, and who is pro-immigration, has a narrower and narrower path to nomination in the Republican Party—the party that for so long has defined itself by belief in those things.” The GOP, he added, has “given up on those core principles in favor of the more viscerally satisfying anger and resentment.”
In this Mr. Flake is too pessimistic, but he is identifying the battle lines in the GOP. The Bannon wing wants to redefine the party around hostility to immigration and trade, but its main animating principle is anger against whoever happens to be in power. This isn’t a principle that can govern even if it manages to win a few elections.
The Bannon wing is also a long way from taking over the GOP, and the next test will the 2018 midterms. Mr. Bannon has called for a “season of war” against all GOP Senate incumbents other than Ted Cruz, and the best response for Republicans who want to hold Congress and advance a free-market agenda is to win that season. This will require candidates who can stitch together the GOP’s populist and traditional wings—and then win in November.
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