![\"\"](\"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Jeff-Flake-Getty-640x480.jpg\")
<\/a>Drew Angerer \/ Getty<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n
by JOEL B. POLLAK
\nBreitbart.com<\/p>\n
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) delivered a rebuke to President Donald Trump from the Senate floor on Wednesday, shortly announcing that he would retire from Congress in 2019 (rather than face certain defeat in his 2018 GOP primary).<\/h3>\n
Flake\u2019s\u00a0speech<\/a>\u00a0was full of lofty platitudes and high-minded accusations against the president, charging Trump with ignoring\u00a0the truth and violating the norms of democratic politics.<\/p>\n Flake could not, and did not, name any particular policy differences with the president. Nor, in his litany of complaints about Trump\u2019s \u201cbehavior,\u201d did Flake name anything that Trump had actually done to warrant criticism (as opposed to hinting at things that Trump had\u00a0said<\/em>).<\/p>\n It was a rant that recapitulated\u00a0the #NeverTrump talking points of 2016, painting Trump as a man unfit to serve as president, regardless of what Trump might achieve \u2014 and is achieving \u2014 for the conservative cause once in office.<\/p>\n As with the speeches by former president George W. Bush andSen. John McCain (R-AZ) last week, Flake said nothing about the role that the American left has played in degrading our democracy \u2014 reducing every political question to race; fomenting class warfare to push interventionist government programs and redistributive policies; trashing the First Amendment on college campuses; and\u00a0trashing the Constitution whenever it proved inconvenient.<\/p>\n Nor did Flake\u00a0mention the issue that is most responsible for his eroding support at home \u2014 namely, immigration. After running for Senate in 2012 on his conservative record in the U.S. House, Flake joined the \u201cGang of Eight\u201d and tried to push through an immigration bill that would have given\u00a0legal status to millions of illegal aliens before establishing\u00a0that U.S. borders were secure\u00a0\u2014 exactly the formula Republican voters have rejected for many years.<\/p>\n Flake wondered aloud about what he called the \u201csilence and inaction\u201d of his colleagues, as if some great crime had been committed, for which they would bear guilt. Few of them \u2014 even those most supportive of Trump \u2014 have held their tongues when they have disagreed with Trump, on rhetoric or\u00a0policy. But Flake seeks to tar the whole GOP\u00a0as accomplices to an amorphous set of sins, known only to the establishment, the Beltway media, and the Democrats.<\/p>\n The speech is being praised to the skies by the mainstream media and by the usual\u00a0NeverTrumpers<\/a>. But it was the most narcissistic gesture since Flake\u00a0pinched Barry Goldwater\u2019s classic title,\u00a0Conscience of a Conservative<\/em>, for his own book.<\/p>\n It was also a cowardly gesture. Having proclaimed the importance of his principles, Flake then refused to fight for them. It was the same retreat\u00a0Republican voters have seen their leaders make for decades \u2014 until\u00a0Trump.<\/p>\n