By now, Jeff Flake thought this would all be over.
Flake, the former Arizona Republican senator and outspoken critic of Donald Trump, concedes that he expected the ripple effects in the Republican party Trump’s loss of the White House to have been bigger by now.
Instead, Flake has had to watch as Trump departed office but Trumpism refused to fade around the country. That includes in Flake’s home state, where the Republican party recently censured him alongside the two other most prominent Republicans – Cindy McCain, the widow of the late senator John McCain, and Doug Ducey, the Arizona governor.
“I do think this fever will break, but it’s been slow,” Flake said in an interview with the Guardian. “It’s been really slow.”
For much of the Trump administration Flake was something of a solitary voice within his party, opposing him first as a rare anti-Trump statewide elected official and then as a member of the club of Republicans who stood up to the 45th president only to face blowback.
Throughout all of that Flake hoped Trump would leave office one way or another, other Republicans would see the same light he did, and the opposition to the 45th president would grow. Flake calls it a “migration” of Republicans away from their fealty to Trump.
“This migration will start,” Flake said chuckling. “It’s just slow to get going.”
These days the outlook for anti-Trump Republicans can feel both bright and dark. Trump is out of office and there are elected Republican officials actively working to move on from Trump under the specter of blowback from activists within the GOP.
Congressman Adam Kinzinger of Illinois has set up a political action committee to fight against the QAnon movement saturating the Republican party. The House Republican conference chairwoman, Liz Cheney, and almost a dozen other Republicans voted to move forward with impeaching Trump again.
Other Republicans stood up to Trump as he was pedaling unfounded claims about voter fraud after Joe Biden won the presidential election but before he took office.
But those forces are more a small rebellion or insurgency and less an army involved in an inter-party civil war. The anti-Trumpists are growing but very slowly, Flake concedes. Flake thinks successfully convicting Trump in his upcoming impeachment trial would help speed things along.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
