Arizona’s Senator Jeff Flake spoke the following yesterday, on the floor of the senate:
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.
This obvious attack on the president was greeted with cheers and praise from all of us who want to see Trump removed, replaced, and consigned to John McCain’s ash heap of history.
But before you become too orgasmic over Flake’s “rebellion,”, let’s take a giant step back and examine other items for which Sen. Flake is on the record:
| Feb. 7, 2017 | PN 37 | Nomination of Elisabeth Prince DeVos to be Secretary of Education | Nomination Confirmed – Senate (50 – 50) |
Yea |
| Feb. 8, 2017 | PN 30 | Nomination of Jeff Sessions to be Attorney General | Nomination Confirmed – Senate (52 – 47) |
Yea |
| Feb. 17, 2017 | PN 44 | Nomination of Scott Pruitt to be Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency | Nomination Confirmed – Senate (52 – 46) |
Yea |
| April 7, 2017 | PN 55 | Nomination of Neil M. Gorsuch to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States | Senate (54 – 45) |
Yea |
| July 27, 2017 | S Amdt 340 | Expanded and Improved Medicare For All Act | Amendment Rejected – Senate | Nay |
| July 28, 2017 | S Amdt 667 | Health Care Freedom Act of 2017 | Amendment Rejected – Senate (49 – 51) |
Yea |
Sessions? Pruitt? DeVos? One more nay would have saved us from Betsy. And Flake, along with Trump’s other detractors McCain and Corker, together could have denied Scott Pruitt the opportunity to foul our air and drinking water for the foreseeable future.
Where was the courage to dispute these obviously inane nominations, all yeas from Senator Flake. Admittedly he landed a few parting shots at Trump, and maybe he’ll have more to say when he re-enters private life; but in truth he’s escaping a mess of his own making—he and all the other Republicans who express their misgivings by rubber-stamping every half-baked whim the idiot president tosses their way.
Flake won’t run again because he can’t win. That kind of attitude should reduce the entries in the NYC Marathon this November.
So thanks for speaking your mind, Senator, but brave words never did take the place of brave actions.
