GOP civil war over Trump deepens
UNITED STATES: A pair of Republican senators sounded an alarm yesterday about President Donald Trump’s fitness for office and warned that his actions were degrading and dangerous to the country – an extraordinary breach that threatens his legislative agenda and further escalates the civil war tearing apart the Republican Party.
Delivering an emotional speech from the Senate floor announcing that he would not seek re-election next year, Senator Jeff Flake said Trump’s behaviour is ‘‘dangerous to our democracy’’ and summoned fellow Republican leaders to speak out about the president’s conduct.
‘‘It is time for our complicity and our accommodation of the unacceptable to end,’’ Flake said. He added, ‘‘Politics can make us silent when we should speak, and silence can equal complicity.’’
The charged remarks from Flake – a totem of traditional conservatism who has repeatedly spoken out about his isolation in Trump’s GOP – came hours after Senator Bob Corker questioned the president’s stability and competence, reigniting a deeply personal feud with Trump.
Corker, the chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee who also will not run for reelection, said in assessing Trump’s nine-month tenure: ’’I’ve seen no evolution in an upward way. As a matter of fact, it seems to me it’s almost devolving.’’
Flake and Corker joined a chorus of mainstream political leaders newly emboldened to excoriate Trump.
Last week, former presidents George W Bush, a Republican, and Barack Obama, a Democrat, both indirectly rebuked Trump’s deportment and warned of peril for the nation under his watch, as did Republican Senator John McCain, who thundered about the rise of what he called ‘‘half-baked, spurious nationalism’’.
The raw candour from two retiring senators came on a day when Trump made a rare trip to the Capitol for an intended show of party unity, lunching privately with Republican senators to rally support for his plan to cut taxes.
For a Republican Party that has been riven by internal turmoil for nearly a decade, the Flake-Corker rupture with Trump exacerbated the ferocious war between the party’s seasoned leaders and its anti-establishment forces, now rallying under the banner of Trumpism.
Polls show the overwhelming majority of Republican voters back Trump, and the fact that two of the president’s most vocal critics in the Senate are retiring underscores how dangerous it is for politicians seeking re-election to break with the president and risk the wrath of his loyal supporters.
Flake’s 18-minute speech was perhaps the most sweeping indictment of Trump delivered by a Republican to date.
A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Flake, 54, spoke with bewilderment and sadness about what he viewed as the withering of morality and civility in the national dialogue.
‘‘We must never regard as normal the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals,’’ Flake said. ‘‘We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country. The personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency.
‘‘We must stop pretending that the degradation of our politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal. They are not normal.
‘‘Reckless, outrageous and undignified behaviour has become excused and countenanced as telling it like it is when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified,’’ Flake said.
–