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Flake, etc.
I’m a conservative: I want less and better government, a stronger military, more secure borders, and a greater respect for traditional values. That last part is my job — the culture war begins at home — but the rest of it is up to the people we elect.
Congressmen (both Representatives and Senators) are elected to pass laws. When I vote for a conservative Congressman, I’m doing so hoping that he’ll go to Congress and be an effective conservative legislator. I’m not sending him to be a cultural warrior, or to be an arbiter of taste and decorum. His job is to pass laws that make government smaller and better, and that keep us free and secure.
I have the liberty of being free to spout off without repercussions. I can express my low opinion of the President with no greater consequence than that I’ll get tempted into a boring and ultimately pointless debate here about whether President Trump is really playing three-dimensional chess or drunken lawn darts. If I choose to spend my time doing that, I’m really the only one who bears the cost.
Our Congressmen, on the other hand, have a job to do, and doing that job effectively means being able to maintain a working relationship with critical colleagues — including, for better or worse, the President. If being effective means biting his tongue and refraining from commenting on things that are, frankly, obvious to everyone, then that’s what I expect my Congressman to do. He’s there to legislate, not to play Emily Post: I elected neither a conscience nor a Cassandra.
Say what you will about the man, there is little mysterious about President Trump. I don’t need — no one needs — a Senator to interpret him for us. We need Senators to repeal Obamacare, cut taxes, rebuild the Navy, and make permanent the regulatory reforms the President is, to his credit, making on his own right now.
So, with all due respect to the high-minded gentlemen (and ladies) of the Senate: shut up and do your jobs.
Published in Politics
Well stated HR – you very thoroughly express my thinking. Thank you
Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham seem to be doing this. Ask them what they thought of Donald Trump two years ago during the primaries.
Although I think Arizona is known for its retirement communities, I guess Flake never learned to play golf like the other two. Perhaps Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham had an extra year to get over the shock of Trump as the party leader.
Well said. Somewhat like NFL players. Shut up and do your job, the one you get paid for.
Henry,
Trump is playing drunken lawn darts but he has a fantastic aim. You get hit with one of his lawn darts and baby you stay hit. You are playing 3-D chess. You just forked their Queen and Rook with your 3-D Knight. No small feat. Keep up the good work.
Regards,
Jim
I am an Arizona Republican voter. Senator Flake was voting for just about everything that Trump wanted. He just wouldn’t suck up to Trump, and for that reason, Trump decided that Senator Flake had to go. If my party will not nominate someone with the “guts” to call out Trump when he is a bully, then I will vote for the Democrat who certainly will.
I think that character counts, and Flake’s objection to Trump’s lack of character was right on. Trump’s inability to accept anything other than slavish obedience will be his downfall.
But you already have one U.S. Senator who is a Democrat. Why do you need another?
To give the Democrat’s subpoena power and floor control. If Trump would simply follow his mandate, he would save the House and would expand the Senate where there are so many Democrats sitting in red states. But Trump is demanding total fealty, and slavish subservience. He will cause us to lose the House, and maybe even the Senate.
Seeing the Kennedy stuff today, is Trump really the most crass and horrible man who was in that position? I don’t think he is that different from the rest, he just doesn’t bother to hide his rough side.
I wish we could have better people in Washington, but they are reflective of the country, and we are who we are.
I am more interested in what — if anything — it achieved. That’s my point: Senator Flake’s job was not to enumerate the President’s shortcomings. Those shortcomings are clearly visible to anyone who’s interesting in seeing them — shoot, there is a veritable industry devoted to enumerating Trump’s very real shortcomings (and the unreal ones as well). The Senator didn’t tell us anything we don’t already know.
I will miss the solid conservative vote he represented in the Senate. I hope his replacement finds more constructive ways to move the conservative agenda forward.
I have long suspected that much of the Never Trump movement originated with Mitt Romney. Goody two shoes Flake is further proof.
That’s their attitude and it’s the wrong attitude. It’s their constitutional prerogative to pass laws but that doesn’t mean they should.
They are elected to represent their constituency. That means dealing with the federal bureaucracy on their behalf. That means being good stewards of the public purse. That means, like a good physician, first doing no harm.
We have conflated this idea that congressional activity equals progress and good governance. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If you ask the Library of Congress how many Federal laws and regulations there are, they will tell you that it is unknowable. There’s the Statues at Large and there are the 51 titles (most in multiple volumes) of the United States Code. And then there are volumes and volumes of case law. In 1982 the DOJ tallied up over 3,000 Federal criminal offenses and no one has tried to tally what’s been added on since.
I’d be happy with a Congress that did nothing all day but repeal existing laws.
Why is Flake so unpopular in AZ?
Is it all because he was part of the opposition to the president during the election and continued to be a leader in opposing his words and attitude ?
Are there other reasons he was clearly going to lose ?
If they don’t do their job we lock them in a room and make them listen to Trump / Clinton debates on a loop recorder.
From Ben Shapiro:
EJ, I appreciate your literalness — I have a thread of that running through me, as well.
Yes, I’d love it if Congress did little except repeal existing laws. That’s lawmaking — that is, they have to pass bills to repeal laws, constrain the actions of executive agencies, etc. It’s all lawmaking, and that’s what I want them to be doing. Beyond passing bills and giving their institutional approval to nominees and treaties, I’m not sure that there’s really much at all they can do, in fact.
My point is that they should focus on legislating effectively.
“We have conflated this idea that congressional activity equals progress and good governance.”
I certainly haven’t. But, in order to make permanent the kinds of things the President is doing now, Congress does have to do its job. Otherwise, the next President can simply re-instate the rules President Trump is modifying and suspending.
Having said that, I’m very pleased by the legislative work the Congress has done in that regard, in its use of the Congressional Review Act. Not only do they thus make regulatory repeal an official act of legislation, but they do it in a way that prevents similar regulatory abuse in the future. As President Trump might say — big, big win!
His job is to pass laws that make government smaller and better, and that keep us free and secure.
What makes you think that he sees his job that way? What makes you think that any Senator or Congressman thinks his job is to do that? Once any legislator gets to DC, his or her job becomes to control the government purse-strings in a way that will assure his or her re-election. Constituent services and everything else come later. Why should someone in government seek to reduce the size of government?
I’m an incurable idealist.
But seriously, I’m trying to encourage good behavior, not simply chronicle the hopelessness of it all.
I’d love to see at least one new law: one making the repeal of any law effective by vote of 35% in both houses with or without Presidential signature. Unfortunately that would require a Constitutional amendment since it isn’t nonsense. And it should take votes of 60% to pass new legislation. But that plan would mean a lot of lawyers would be unemployed and they write the statutes and regulations.
Which is why we sorely need term limits, they need to come home to face the music of living under the regs they have foisted on the rest of us. And the sooner the better. And don’t try to tell me we’d lose too many good people, as if there are no other good people to take their places. There are far more good prospects outside D.C. than inside that sink-hole but few who want to tackle the job under current conditions.
Hear, hear.
That attitude is why we’re in so much trouble now. I expect my Congressmen to do what’s best for the country according to the Constitution. That may or may not consist of passing laws.
Sorry, EJ. I should have read through the comments.
I do not see this at all. It seems to me that Trump has been more than willing to compromise in order to achieve success. Flake has always been adverse to Trump’s personality. But he still was a member of a team, loose nit and arrogant/independant, but still the Republican team. There was no need for him to stand on the Senate floor and make that derogatory speech. It really just diminished Flake himself. Trump is and will be POTUS well after Flake is gone. As far as Trump being the cause, if it happens, of the Republicans losing the House and/or Senate…it won’t be because of Trump. If they do not get a tax bill passed, the Republican Congress only need to look in the mirror. So far I can’t remember a single US Congressional seat that a Republican has lost since Trump became President.
What about the dignity of the Senate? You know, it’s supposed to be very dignified. So its members should of course always try to appear very dignified. The people who elect senators should understand that the Sentate’s dignity takes precedence over their own interests and problems.
Beat me to it.
Yes, I know — though, according to the Constitution, legislating pretty much is their job.
But the post was a little more pointed than that. It isn’t so much about legislators passing more laws, as about them doing their job and not being unnecessary moral authorities, particularly when doing so makes it harder for them to do what we need them to do.
Our incentives are upside-down. What are politicians rewarded for, in the form of votes?
They are not incentivized to reduce the scope and reach of gov’t. They are rewarded for granting rights and spending, instead of shrinking the influence of gov’t in our daily lives, and backstopping the 1st ten amendments as something that was recognized by the newly-formed gov’t as something inherent in our being, not something granted by dudes in w(h)igs.
That basic assertion, around the first 10 Amendments, is something completely lost in today’s polity. They don’t exist to stay out of our lives. They exist to insert themselves into it. So they can come back next year, and do more…inserting.
I think it’s not so much that we can’t seem to vote them out. It’s that, by their position of power, they are extremely unlikeable to be voted out, when they can sell votes to half the population.
So: Term limits, or tar and feathering. Take yer pick.
But there’s that pesky Eighth Amendment to deal with.
Good riddance, Jeff.
You have an 18 percent approval rating for a reason, which is that: you no longer have a coalition willing to support what you do, largely on the immigration front. I never once heard Flake moan about Obama’s abuses of power. He also never denied that he would have preferred President Hillary Clinton, because Trump offended his “conservative” sensibilities.
Uncle Pat was right: It’s Trump’s Party Now
Yeah, I know a lot of people agree with that assessment, but I don’t. Flake voted as a conservative on most things, and is a decent man. I’d rather have him voting in the Senate than not. I’m hoping it isn’t Trump’s party in any meaningful sense. I want Republicans to be civil and conservative.
I once believed that, exactly as you state it, but now I realize how many gatekeepers stand between the average citizen getting anyone of honesty, decency and intelligence into office.
Add into the above that even a “small election” for local Congressman or woman could entail millions of dollars, and it is no surprise that almost always, only those who are entangled in the malfeasance necessary end up being able to run for office.
On top of that, there is our beloved Fourth Estate, which has been taken over by those forces that William Casey had bragged about, way back in the first days of his career at the CIA.