Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., announced Tuesday he would not seek re-election and said his decision was based on all the things everyone is so sick of in Washington.
Flake said he hates the “discord,” the “dysfunction” and the “destructiveness of our politics.” Washington needs more comity, he argued.
But those problems have been around for years. Washington is busted, and can’t do much of what Flake wants. Congress can’t restrain spending, it can’t reduce the debt, it can’t manage the federal government and the very Senate in which Flake serves voted against the idea of having a say over the decision to go to war.
Those problems never bothered Flake before. In fact, Flake started as a term limits guy, and after serving his promised three terms in the House, he broke his pledge and sought a fourth term. He served six terms in the House, then won a Senate race in 2011.
The city hasn’t worked well for almost any part of Flake’s 13-year career in the House, and his nearly five years in the Senate.
So what suddenly changed? Two words: Donald Trump. Flake warned in his floor speech that Trump’s manner of doing business shouldn’t be seen as “normal.”
“A new phrase has entered the language to describe the accommodation of a new and undesirable order – that phrase being ‘the new normal,'” he said. “But we must never adjust to the present coarseness of our national dialogue – with the tone set at the top.”
This new Trump tone is “dangerous to a democracy,” he argued.
But more specifically, Trump became dangerous to Flake’s re-election. For the first time in years, Flake is not expected to win, a reality that Trump helped to create.
An August poll said Flake had an 18 percent approval rating in his home state and was down 14 points to his Republican primary challenger. Just before that poll was taken, Trump supported that challenger, Kelli Ward.
After Flake broke his term-limit pledge more than a decade ago, he said he deserved to have a primary opponent. “By all rights, I ought to have an opponent,” he said. “I just got lucky, I guess.”
Now, Flake says, the “coarseness” of Washington is too great — the coarseness Trump brings when he strips away the pretty prose that’s been used for years to hide the failures of Washington. Flake said he doesn’t want to run against that reality.
“I have decided that I will be better able to represent the people of Arizona and to better serve my country and my conscience by freeing myself from the political considerations that consume far too much bandwidth and would cause me to compromise far too many principles,” he said on the floor.
Or as a more coarse observer might put it, Flake’s luck just ran out.
