'Jeff Flake's 9 toughest hits on Trump'
Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake announced Tuesday that he will not seek re-election in 2018, and then promptly took the Senate floor and began a lengthy screed against the state of Republican politics in the Trump era.
Flake wrote a book titled "Conscience of a Conservative," published in August, that featured a similar argument. He has been consistently critical of President Donald Trump's rhetoric, making him a target for pro-Trump forces in the coming primary season. With his decision Tuesday, that fight is settled -- but a larger battle might now be joined.
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"We must never adjust to the present coarseness of our national dialogue -- with the tone set at the top. 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."
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"[W]e must stop pretending that the degradation of our politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal. They are not normal. 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."
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"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."
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"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."
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"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."
