Jeff Flake writes:

It is elementary to have to say so, but for democracy to work one side must be prepared to accept defeat. If the only acceptable outcome is for your side to win, and a loser simply refuses to lose, then America is imperiled.

I once had a career in public life — six terms in the House of Representatives and another six years in the Senate — and then the rise of a dangerous demagogue, and my party’s embrace of him, ended that career. Or rather, I chose not to go along with my party’s rejection of its core conservative principles in favor of that demagogue. In a speech on the Senate floor on Oct. 24, 2017, I announced that because of the turn my party had taken, I would not run for re-election: the career of a politician that is complicit in undermining his own values doesn’t mean much.

As a lifelong conservative Republican, I was surprised to find myself so profoundly at odds with my own party and with the man who had used its ballot line to vault to power. But the values that made me a conservative and an American were indeed being undermined, the country was paying a steep price for it, and I would be a liar to my family, my state and my conscience if I were to pretend otherwise.

It is hard to comprehend how so many of my fellow Republicans were able — and are still able — to engage in the fantasy that they had not abruptly abandoned the principles they claimed to believe in. It is also difficult to understand how this betrayal could be driven by deference to the unprincipled, incoherent and blatantly self-interested politics of Donald Trump, defined as it is by its chaos and boundless dishonesty. The conclusion that I have come to is that they did it for the basest of reasons — sheer survival and rank opportunism. [Continue reading…]