Turning the page:

Passages could haunt senator’s re-election campaign

Several passages in Sen. Jeff Flake’s new book, “Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle,” could senator’sfurther aggravate relationship the with President Donald Trump and his supporters as Flake seeks a second term.

Sen. Jeff Flake is the author of a new book, a defense of Goldwater- and Reagan-style conservatism and a critique of his own Republican Party in the era of President Donald Trump.

The book comes in advance of his own 2018 primary campaign, in which there has already been speculation about a challenge from a Trump-backed opponent. Flake often criticized Trump’s tone and policy prescriptions during last year’s presidential campaign and refused to endorse or vote for him. Trump at the time dismissed Flake as “ineffective” and weak on immigration, a reference to his longtime support for bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform.

With his book, “Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle,” published Tuesday by Random House, Flake could further antagonize his critics on the right.

Under Trump, the GOP faces “a crisis of principle,” Flake says, calling for the party to retreat from its newfound fascination with nativism, populism and protectionism.

“Never has a party so quickly or easily abandoned its core principles as my party did in the course of the 2016 campaign,” Flake writes in the book, which

shares its title with the influential 1960 political manifesto by then-Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz. “And when you suddenly decide that you don’t believe what had recently been your most deeply held beliefs, then you open yourself to believing anything — or maybe nothing at all.”

He’s already getting blowback. The appropriation of the Goldwater book’s title on Tuesday drew a stern rebuke from Brent Bozell, founder of the conservative Media Research Center and son of L. Brent Bozell Jr., Goldwater’s ghostwriter on the original “The Conscience of a Conservative.”

Here are several passages that could further aggravate Flake’s relationship with Trump and his supporters as he seeks his party’s renomination for a second Senate term.

Trump’s use of Twitter