Tonight I had the opportunity to see a discussion involving former U.S. Senator Jeff Flake. Flake, a Republican, is known best for making occasional critical comments of President Trump in his last 2 years in office. He decided not to run for reelection, and left office just a few weeks ago.
I think one of the things Flake illustrates is just how difficult it will be to achieve actual bipartisanship. I think bipartisanship is something that a lot of people claim to want, but they don’t actually want in truth. This has manifested itself perfectly in the trend of people trying to downplay the criticism that Flake has had of the President. They say, “Oh, well he just votes with the President anyway.” Yeah, no shit. He’s a Republican. If he started voting opposite the President all the time, he wouldn’t be a Republican anymore. Just because he believes (rightfully so) that President Trump is a man-child who’s lowering the level of discourse in this country to one level above Flavor of Love doesn’t change the fact that Jeff Flake is a conservative.
If you want to hand-wave away any sign of bipartisanship on Flake’s part as toothless, then I have to ask what are you hoping to accomplish? If Flake can’t criticize a member of his own party without being accused of not doing enough, then when are you ever going to be satisfied? There’s nothing in it for Flake if he decides that all criticism of Trump is gonna do is just going to piss off his base anyway, if the opposing party won’t even listen to what he has to say.
But why is bipartisanship in and of itself important? It’s because the alternative just leads to the kind of gridlock in Congress that has just increased over the last decade. If you view everybody on the opposite party of you as immoral, no matter what, then good luck trying to get 60 votes on anything in the Senate. And if you can’t get any bills passed, how do you plan to make any of the kind of changes that you’re hoping to make?
Try as they might, the Democrats are never going to occupy 100 seats in the U.S. Senate. The G.O.P. is here to stay. If you want President Trump impeached, as many people do, then you’re going to need at least 20 Republican Senators to vote to convict him. If you want them to do that, then it would help if you didn’t downplay any effort they might offer at bipartisanship. It’s like taking an olive branch and throwing it away because you wanted the whole olive tree.
Former Sen. Flake touched on something in his talk tonight that I think was especially prescient. He said that it’s difficult to have any sort of bipartisanship if a lawmaker is criticized if they even hint that they might be open to changing their mind. He specifically referenced that you’ll get criticized if you indicate that you might actually be willing to listen to the testimony at the hearing you’re about to go to.
This isn’t to try and portray Flake as some sort of hero. He’s not. The guy voted in a way that I disagree with on the majority of the votes he took while in office. But that’s going to be every member of the party I disagree with. If you hold everyone to a partisan purity test, good luck trying to get anything accomplished.
Ed On Politics 