Arizona’s junior senator sets stage for Trump battle
It’s not surprising to find an Arizona Republican smack in the middle of a poke-in-the-eye dustup with the powerful. The only surprise these days is that the Republican in question isn’t John McCain.
McCain is in a fight of his own, having cast the final blow against the health care plan crafted by his fellow Senate Republicans and President Trump. In his home state, references to that vote prompt common Arizona refrain: “Just McCain being McCain.”
The newest set-to, however, involves the state’s junior Republican senator, Jeff Flake, a first-termer who may have blasted a big hole in his reelection campaign next year by publishing a book.
And not just any book. A book that swiped its name from one published a generation ago by Arizona’s revered veteran Sen. Barry Goldwater: “Conscience of a Conservative.” A book that vented about the Republican Party and what he calls his colleagues’ “abdication” of their responsibility to stand up against the party’s embattled president.
Republicans are in “denial” about Trump’s “erratic executive branch,” Flake wrote, saying that the party’s “unnerving silence” would be as if Noah had watched the flood rising and decided to focus on other things. “At a certain point, if one is being honest, the flood becomes the thing that is most worthy of attention,” he wrote. “At a certain point, it might be time to build an ark.”
For Arizonans, that has set up a question: Will the president, who famously punches back when hit, seek revenge on Flake by summoning a Senate challenger? White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders would not rule out that possibility when asked about it Wednesday.
“I’m not sure about any potential funding of a campaign,” she said. “But I think that Sen. Flake would serve his constituents much better if he was less focused on writing a book and attacking the president, and (more on) passing legislation.”
In Arizona, Republican strategists believe that Trump has the power to engineer Flake’s defeat, particularly if he were to clear the field to a single challenger and vouch for that person.
“If he did get involved, the money would not be an issue,” said one Republican strategist. Like several others, he spoke on condition.
Were the president to put his imprimatur on a candidate, it would set up a roaring battle between the ascendant Trump wing of the Republican Party and a senator who has more or less been an establishment conservative.