Thank (or blame) Ariz. for Flake’s Kavanaugh delay

Republicans in Arizona, take a bow. It seems you, the ones who make up the most-conservative wing of the party, are responsible for the oneweek delay in the Senate’s march to elevating Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., conceded that he never would have stepped out of line and dared delay Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote had he been up for re-election.

“Not a chance,” Flake told Scott Pelley.

“There’s no value to reaching across the aisle,” he explained. “There’s no currency for that anymore. There’s no incentive.”

Think about that.

There’s no incentive for a duly elected United States senator to exercise his (or her) own judgment before handing over a lifetime appointment to one of the nation’s most powerful positions?

The only reason Flake was willing to hold up the process for a mere week — seven days to investigate whether there is anything to a serious accusation made against Kavanaugh — is because he no longer needs the approval of his party’s base?

And here I thought Congress was a separate legislative branch — one imbued with the power to provide balance in our system of government — not a branch office of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Flake has long been out of sync with the Party of Trump, going back as far as July 2016, when he introduced himself to then-presidential nominee as “the other senator from Arizona, the one who didn’t get captured, and I want to talk to you about statements like that.”

Since Trump’s election, Flake, along with the late Sen. John McCain, has been one of the few prominent Republicans who hasn’t asked “how high” when Trump says jump. Now, he’s paying a price for that. In announcing a year ago that he wouldn’t seek re-election, this traditional libertarian-leaning conservative bowed to the reality that he couldn’t win Arizona’s GOP primary.

And so he was willing to do the right thing last week and call for a delay in confirming Kavanaugh to the highest court in the land..

Flake’s “60 Minutes” admission is chilling.

The only guy willing to take a step out of line and call for (gasp!) compromise is the guy who couldn’t get reelected.

It makes me wonder how many other Republicans have doubts about putting Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court — doubts that never will be voiced.

Party trumps country, after all, and apparently, common sense.

“It’s this whole tribal nature of politics that becomes shirts and skins,” Flake told Pelley. “It’s us-versus-them. There’s no room for compromise or doubt.”

Truly, we are doomed.