Former Sen. Flake of Arizona expects calm, dignity during Biden term
Jan 20, 2021, 4:15 AM
(AP Photo)
(AP Photo)
PHOENIX — Former Republican U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona is expecting a vastly different environment as the country transitions to Joe Biden as its next president.
Flake wrote Tuesday in an op-ed for The Washington Post that a shift from Donald Trump to Biden will result in more calm and dignity in the country in the Democrat’s first six months in office.
“For the first time in what seems like forever, Americans sleep soundly again,” Flake wrote.
Flake, who said he voted for Biden in the general election, has been an outspoken critic of Trump and the damage he thinks the Republican president has done for the GOP and conservatism.
He believes the Biden administration has put qualified people in place to navigate the country through the coronavirus pandemic and political unrest that has shook the U.S. in recent weeks.
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The move away from Trump will also give Republicans a chance to take a deep look at their values, according to Flake.
“We conservatives succumbed to the very thing that we had once organized ourselves to oppose. We forgot that a healthy mistrust of executive power was supposed to be our most deeply held belief,” Flake said. “We forgot that the institutions of American constitutional democracy are sacrosanct and not some twisted ‘deep state’ plot.
“We aided and abetted this assault on our values and on objective reality itself. We were accessories to this deeply ugly period. We endangered our country.”
Flake did not seek reelection at the end of his Senate term after serving from 2013 to 2019, saying he was out of step with the Republican Party in the era of Trump.
He was one of several Arizona Republicans who gave their support to Biden before the election and ensuing riots.
“So, to put it mildly, we Republicans have work to do. Trust to regain. And we know it,” Flake said. “And when we are honest with ourselves in the dawn of this new era, we are just as relieved as everyone else that the malefactor was turned out, consigned to a rogue’s place in history.”
