Thoughts on Trump, Flake, Republican Party

A lifelong Republican conservative himself, Arizona Republican Senator Jeff Flake’s new book, “Conscience of a Conservative” published the first week of August 2017 draws from the title of an old Barry Goldwater book and sharply condemns current Republican conservatism for its role in a “culture of vicious dehumanization,” and also mentions its tendency for incoherence, rejection of empirical fact and practicing just plain hypocrisy.

On the conservative Republican Party embracing the regrettable Donald Trump during the last election, Flake is blunt. “Never has a party so quickly or easily abandoned its core principles to embrace this man.”

I have to agree with Flake, the first 6 months of the Trump administration looked more like a coup than a routine change in government.

Flake’s book takes current Republican conservatism to task. Many in the MSM have called Flake’s new book morally courageous.

The book is timely, particularly in showing the hate of the nation’s political divide like what we just witnessed a few days ago with the resurgence of racist and sexist groups like the American Nazi party and the Ku Klux Klan, both of which officially endorsed Trump for President during the election season and are determined to turn the clock backwards to make America an ‘all white male’ dominated society again at the expense of America’s minorities and women.

Senator Flake believes that the GOP didn’t lose its mind when Trump arrived but rather it was the loss of the party’s direction that made a Trump Presidency possible and that loss predates his presidency by two decades when the Republicans started purging the party of all their moderates to make the party ‘pure‘ hard right with no one to debate or counterbalance the radical conservatives who do not tolerate any criticism of their ideology one tiny bit even when it‘s coming from one of their own like Flake.

JAMES SEFCAK Yuma