Former Sen. Flake won’t call president a racist, but he should

Former U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake is a voice of reason in unreasonable times.

Standing up to Donald Trump and what the president stands for cost Flake his position in the U.S. Senate, but he hasn’t abandoned his principles.

He’s still trying to save the Republican Party.

In an interview with the

Flake said, “I don’t think the president will be re-elected. Many of us thought, I certainly did, that he wouldn’t be elected the first time. So it could happen. But if it does, I think that spells doom long-term for the Republican Party... You can drill down on the base, and it may work in an election here or there, but at some point you run out of angry people.”

In that same interview, Flake was asked about Trump’s racist statements.

“Why is it difficult for Republicans to call those attacks racism?” Flake was asked.

He answered in part, “I understand the reluctance to throw terms like that around. I never have and never will call the president a racist. But to try to deny that that was a racist statement, “Go back where you came from?”... That’s an awful statement to make. And there’s no other way to characterize it. But that doesn’t give me or anybody license to say, ‘Well, because of that statement, the president is a racist.’ I think you go too far.”

No, you don’t.

If blatantly racist statements, repeated again and again, don’t make a person a racist, what does?

Does he have to burn a cross on the White House lawn?

Wear a pointy white hood?

I don’t think so.

I believe there is plenty of evidence of racism in the fact that Trump led the “birther” movement against former President Barack Obama. He vilified Muslims. He described those from Africa or Haiti as coming from “s---hole” countries. He gave what appeared to be a stamp of approval to the neoNazis in Charlottesville by saying there were “very fine people on both sides.”

He managed at once to come off as racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and ignorant by suggesting that four Democratic congresswomen of color “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

And he has been unrelenting in his use of “invasion” and worse when it comes to migrants at the Southwest border.

Flake told the Deseret News, “But there are times when the president goes so far that you have to speak out.. And if Republicans don’t, then it just becomes normalized.”

Exactly.

So why not call a racist a racist? I

asked Flake to clarify that for me over the weekend and he said, “I will continue to call the president out for making racist comments, but I won’t call him a racist, just as I will call him out for uttering falsehoods, but I won’t all him a liar. To use such extreme language would put me in a camp that is, over time, too easily ignored.”

It’s not “extreme language.” It’s simply accurate. And if we don’t use it then, as Flake suggested, we risk having what the president says being “normalized.”

Racist language is racism. And any person who uses it a racist.