Senator Jeff Flake, as of this writing, is Arizona's junior Senator. He hails from a rural part of eastern Arizona, where a lot of good Americans live. When he ran for, and won a seat in, Congress, he pledged he would only serve three terms and then step down. Of course he went on to break that promise, ran for two more terms, and then ran for Senator in 2012 and won.
Senator Flake immediately got in good with the Republican Establishment. Among his first actions was to join Senator Benedict McCain in the so-called "Gang of Eight" to force a largely unwanted piece of immigration legislation down our throats. I didn't vote for him for Senate because I didn't trust him, and so it wasn't a situation where I personally was suffering from buyer's remorse here. However, some others did.
Phoenix-area radio talk show host Bruce Jacobs, who is heard here in Tucson when Garret Lewis goes on vacation, immediately took to calling him "Jeff Snake" (it does have a nice ring to it, doesn't it?). Bruce Jacobs went on so far to say this summer that if "Jeff Snake" won the primary, then he would vote for his Democrat opponent........even though "Jeff Snake" would win.
There was every indication that Jeff Flake would run for re-election. He started getting himself on national TV more often. He wrote a book, shamelessly lifting the title from one of Barry Goldwater's books. Garret Lewis and his gang would give us daily morning updates as to how many copies of his book were being sold..........the numbers weren't pretty. Polls started showing that he was in trouble....which I guess would be good if you could trust them, which I don't. I personally thought Arizona had elected a career politician for a lifetime in office, who would have had the longevity of Fidel Castro.
But then something happened. His book wasn't selling. His approval rating plummeted down to 17%. His only announced primary challenger, Dr. Kelli Ward, was gaining traction. "Jeff Snake" doubled down on his attacks on President Trump. Then this week, he announced he would be retiring from the Senate.
My first reaction to his announcement was that this was the greatest news I've heard in six months. But I found myself disgusted at the parting shots he took on the Senate floor, and I'm thinking, we've still got a year and a half of his "I know what you want but here's what you need" attitude towards us. I'm not buying his phony argument that he's doing this out of honor. I can tell exactly why he is leaving, and that's because he had reliable intelligence that there was no way he was going to win re-election.
Now on those occasions of a fatass politician finding himself sailing on that kind of boat, what are your options?
One: you can do what Arlen Specter did. You can jump over to the Democrats and join them. Arlen Specter did exactly that when he learned he was going to be defeated by his primary challenger. He went over to the Democrats, and then found that the Democrats don't exactly like turncoats either. He was no longer a committee chairman or a ranking member. He went down to the lowest possible seniority in the Democratic heirarchy. Harry Reid would not permit him to occupy a higher position. An up and coming Democratic candidate was bumped off the ballot in Pennsylvania to make room for Arlen Specter. And Arlen Specter still lost.
Two: "Jeff Snake", upon seeing what happened to Arlen Specter, isn't going to jump ship. He's not quite the level of backstabber that the senior Senator from Arizona is, but he's a backstabber nonetheless. He's "Jeff Snake" after all. He's got a primary challenger. Now he could run in the primary, but what does that make you look like if you lose? He saw what happened to Richard Lugar. The Arlen Specter option is out. And now the Richard Lugar option doesn't look good either.
Three: you do what Bob Corker is doing. You say you've had enough, your party has been hijacked, you don't fit in anymore (which you don't, Senator), and you have your temper tantrum designed to elicit the maximum amount of praise from Organized Media. This option is preferable since you get to do damage to your voters who are too stupid to realize that they need your mastery over them.
There is the fourth, and that's to resign outright, and go home. That would be the honorable way to go, but I'm not going to even jokingly suggest that your average fatass politician is capable of this kind of honor.
The bottom line: the base has been emboldened by last year's victory of The Donald. We're mad as hell at the long list of broken promises. We're not sending you, Senator, to Washington so that you can play "Let's Make A Deal". We want Obamacare overturned, The Great Wall of Trump, tax reform, and domestic job creation as opposed to "free trade".
In short Senator, we don't want the Republicans to be the party that they defeated in 1994.
Now please have the decency to resign.
No comments:
Post a Comment