{"id":947,"date":"2017-10-24T20:45:04","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T03:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=947"},"modified":"2017-10-24T20:45:04","modified_gmt":"2017-10-25T03:45:04","slug":"jeff-flake-and-how-republicans-have-been-replaced-by-opportunists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=947","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Flake, and how Republicans have been replaced by Opportunists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A really good speech doesn&#8217;t have a long lifespan.\u00a0 It&#8217;s like a firework.\u00a0 It delights and thrills for a few moments, and while all of the excitement is hot and flying through the air, we feel like we&#8217;re transported temporarily to a different place.\u00a0 A different possibility.\u00a0 But then the speech is done, and all we have is the memory.\u00a0 And the memory doesn&#8217;t do it justice.<\/p>\n<p>Well, we have the internet now, so we can rewatch good speeches whenever we want.\u00a0 So watch this one.\u00a0 Watch it, and then let&#8217;s talk about Jeff Flake.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WpAZm5ouaBA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Jeff Flake is a conservative.\u00a0 According to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/great-speech-jeff-flake-now-do-something-about-trump\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">daily beast<\/a>, he&#8217;s as conservative as they come.\u00a0 He&#8217;s conservative and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Conscience-Conservative-Rejection-Destructive-Principle\/dp\/B0743MVFTW\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1508902548&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=Jeff+Flake+book\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">has a conscience<\/a>, and he&#8217;s been outspoken against Trump for a while.<\/p>\n<p>But as much as he&#8217;s been verbally critical of Trump, he hasn&#8217;t really backed that up with action.\u00a0 Even when he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Efy9IdQeItI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">showed up on Colbert<\/a>\u00a0he stated how he would vote for the Graham-Cassidy bill, in line with Trump&#8217;s desires.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, his whole voting record has been fairly consistently in line with Trump.<\/p>\n<p>To be fair, the Republican party has been usurped by people that aren&#8217;t true conservatives.\u00a0 From what I&#8217;ve read about Flake, he&#8217;s been voting his conscience.\u00a0 It just looks like he&#8217;s voting with Trump.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been trying to think of an analogy.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s the best I can come up with tonight.<\/p>\n<p>Imagine a raging fire.\u00a0 The fire is spreading, threatening the livelihood of a small town.<\/p>\n<p>Two schools of thought form on how to deal with the crisis.\u00a0 The first group suggests that the town should pool all their resources and bring as much water to the fire as possible and try to save the town.\u00a0 There&#8217;s risk.\u00a0 It could wind up costing a lot of money.\u00a0 But if they can put out the fire, the town will be saved, and everyone will still have a home.<\/p>\n<p>The second group has a different idea.\u00a0 They think the risk to life is too great, and it would be better to let the fire reach the edge of the town.\u00a0 When those houses on the edge start burning, they can topple the homes, trapping the fire so that it can&#8217;t spread to the rest of the town.\u00a0 It would risk fewer lives, have a greater chance of stopping the fire from taking the whole town, but a few people (those home owners) are going to suffer.<\/p>\n<p>Depending on your values, the first option might look better to you.\u00a0 Or maybe the second option.\u00a0 It&#8217;s hard to say.\u00a0 Doing nothing would be the worst thing, because everyone loses.<\/p>\n<p>I think Flake falls into that second group.\u00a0 He&#8217;d take the safest route.\u00a0 Maybe he fears that if the town loses all of its resources trying to put out the fire, the town is lost regardless.\u00a0 Voting his conscience, he&#8217;d say trap the fire at the expense of a few houses.<\/p>\n<p>Now imagine a third group gets involved.\u00a0 They have an interest in building golf courses at the edge of the town, and they were wanting to buy the properties that are about to be burned.\u00a0 This fire is the perfect opportunity.\u00a0 They swoop in and loudly support the second group.\u00a0 They shout it like it was their idea.\u00a0 Heck, some of them might even claim that it was their idea.<\/p>\n<p>That third group is Trump, the Tea Party, Bannon&#8230; all of the opportunists that have swarmed in and taken over the Republican party.\u00a0 They make it look like they&#8217;re voicing support for a fair and reasonable position, but they&#8217;re just in it for themselves.\u00a0 They don&#8217;t care if people get hurt.\u00a0 They&#8217;re don&#8217;t care about the future.\u00a0 They want the fast buck, the quick profit, the immediate satisfaction.<\/p>\n<p>And you know what?\u00a0 Those assholes probably started the fire in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, let&#8217;s get back to Flake.<\/p>\n<p>Flake&#8217;s speech is amazing, right up to the point where he says he&#8217;s no longer running for office.\u00a0 Because unfortunately, by this time next week, no one&#8217;s going to remember his speech.\u00a0 They&#8217;re just going to list his name with Corker&#8217;s.\u00a0 One more conservative Republican driven out by Trump and his ilk.<\/p>\n<p>If Flake wanted to end his speech in a more memorable way, he should have called for Impeachment.\u00a0 Everything leading up to that point supported that position.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, he&#8217;s quitting.\u00a0 He&#8217;s giving up his position of power.\u00a0 He&#8217;s leaving the place where he has a voice and can make a difference and truly vote his conscience.<\/p>\n<p>If this were still analogy land, it is the equivalent of someone from Group 2 saying, &#8220;You know what?\u00a0 I don&#8217;t like what these other people are doing.\u00a0 So I&#8217;m going to move to another town where it&#8217;s not my problem.\u00a0 BYE!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>What he should have done was stay in the game.\u00a0 After the houses came crashing down and the fire was stopped, he should have found ways to compromise with Group 1 so that the homes could be rebuilt, and the opportunists prevented from rebuilding on the burned down homes of those hurt worst by the fire.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I listened to the speech.\u00a0 It was good.\u00a0 Flake told the President off, and I wish more Republicans would do the same.\u00a0 But the follow through is terrible, and ultimately overshadows the message.\u00a0 If that&#8217;s his protest, it is weak.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t think he was going to retain his seat, anyway.\u00a0 Which makes not running a bit of an empty gesture.<\/p>\n<p>The Left are going to be upset with Flake because they don&#8217;t know if they&#8217;ll be able to beat whoever runs as the Republican for his seat next.\u00a0 The Right&#8230; probably doesn&#8217;t care.<\/p>\n<p>What we need instead of words and empty gestures are principled actions.\u00a0 We need better follow through.\u00a0 We need to call the opportunists on their bullshit, take them out of positions of power, and never let them back in again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A really good speech doesn&#8217;t have a long lifespan.\u00a0 It&#8217;s like a firework.\u00a0 It delights and thrills for a few moments, and while all of the excitement is hot and flying through the air, we feel like we&#8217;re transported temporarily to a different place.\u00a0 A different possibility.\u00a0 But then the speech is done, and all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":948,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions\/948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}