While there might be downside to the person challenging Trump, a primary opponent isn’t likely to take Trump on if he’s concerned about playing it safe and husbanding his or her popularity. The primary challenger, if you will, acts like the horse who jumps out to the lead, wears down the favorite and allows his stablemate to come from behind for the victory. And sometimes, the lead horse might actually win. Who’d do this? Maybe someone who already has a job (e.g., Mitt Romney, the Utah senator-elect), or doesn’t need one (e.g., a retired government official), or just thinks it’s the right thing to do (outgoing Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake?). ...
[A] primary run doesn’t preclude a third-party run by a different candidate, most likely a moderate candidate in the event Trump wins the GOP nomination. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, visiting in New Hampshire, explained the ideal circumstances for such a run. My colleague David Weigel writes, “Kasich was speculating on what it would take to break the two-party system wide open. He imagined a 2020 matchup between Trump and a left-wing Democrat that would create ‘a vast ocean between the parties.’ ” The decision to mount a third-party run could wait until after both parties pick their nominee; but if Trump falters in the primary, nothing would stop Kasich (or anyone else) from entering the race. (For now, Kasich occupies an enviable position. A non-candidate with high name ID can continue to criticize Trump and urge his fellow Republicans to hold Trump accountable for his rhetoric and actions.)
I just love the phrase "husbanding his or her popularity."
Anyway... someone other than Kasich is supposed to go in there and wear himself out weakening Trump, and Kasich has identified himself as the one to come in after someone else does the groundwork. Kasich is the moderate in waiting — quite openly and with strong support from The Washington Post.
"... as the first Republican senator to call President Trump the domestic and international menace that he is. I applauded him for describing the president’s tweets as 'all noise and no signal' and for daring to charge his administration with Orwellian doublespeak, 'dividing us along fissures of truth and falsity and keeping us in a kind of low-level dread.' I said that Flake’s book had rhetorical power. But looking back on it, it didn’t. Jeff Flake’s book couldn’t even convince Jeff Flake. As of this writing, he has voted with Trump 84 percent of the time... It wasn’t that I was too kind to Flake when his book came out. It was that I mischaracterized his book altogether. 'Conscience of a Conservative' was not a cri de coeur, a critique of Trump, an analysis of the sorry state of our politics or an invitation to recommit to Goldwater’s philosophy. It was a relic. It was a bit of quixotica. It was a tragedy."
The vote is on strict party lines. Senator Flake spoke just before the vote, and it seemed as though he was conditioning his vote on a one week delay, during which the FBI could do an investigation. But as his little speech wore on, it became apparent that he was only expressing the view that the Senate should delay its action for a week, but his committee vote would be yes. After the vote, it was made clear that everyone understood that the Committee has no power to dictate a delay to the full body of the Senate. The leadership of the Senate will decide how to go forward with the vote, and Senator Flake was only saying what he would need to feel "comfortable" voting for Kavanaugh in the full Senate.
ADDED: There's some discussion in the comments about my use of the word "ineffectual." I'll concede that Flake was effectual if the effect he meant to have was no effect. He was able to take a stand about how he felt about the importance of a one-week delay without causing the delay actually to occur. I do follow a general rule of thumb that people do what they want to do, and using that, I should say that Flake did exactly what he wanted, because he wanted the effect of no effect.
AND: Here's what confronted Flake as he made his way to the committee meeting this morning:
Women confront Sen. Jeff Flake after he says he'll vote yes to Kavanuagh: “That’s what you’re telling all women in America, that they don’t matter. They should just keep it to themselves because if they have told the truth you’re just going to help that man to power anyway.” pic.twitter.com/T7fSpyT69E
"You’re telling all women that they don’t matter — that they should just stay quiet because if they tell you what happened to them, you’re going to ignore them... You’re just going to help that man to power anyway... That’s what you’re telling all of these women. That’s what you’re telling me right now. Look at me when I’m talking to you! You’re telling me that my assault doesn’t matter, that what happened to me doesn’t matter and that you’re going to let people who do these things into power! That’s what you’re telling me when you vote for him! Don’t look away from me! Look at me and tell me that it doesn’t matter what happened to me — that you’ll let people like that go into the highest court in the land!"
Here's the tweet, which is funny for a few reasons:
Sen. Jeff Flake(y), who is unelectable in the Great State of Arizona (quit race, anemic polls) was caught (purposely) on “mike” saying bad things about your favorite President. He’ll be a NO on tax cuts because his political career anyway is “toast.”
The funniest thing about it to me is Trump calling himself "your favorite President." It's absolutely accurate, because he is our only President. I mean, you might try to write a screwball comedy — in the manner of "My Favorite Wife" — where some strange occurrence causes there to be 2 Presidents, but even if you think Hillary was cheated out of the presidency, there's no way she is the President. And if you try to say, but my favorite President is Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt, I'm going to say it depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is.
There's also some rock solid content. Flake has decided not to expose himself to an actual election process in Arizona, where a GOP incumbent should be able to win, and instead — with no judgment of the electorate to worry about — he's just speaking out against Trump. Flake's speaking has struck me as vain and attention-seeking, and the love he's getting from liberals would never translate into support in an actual political contest.
The "(purposely)" is funny, because who doesn't believe that Flake meant for his remark to be heard? Making it seem secret was a way to amplify it. That was my opinion and my favorite President agreed. Good. I also like that he used the "mike" spelling and not "mic." (Maybe Laurence Tribe will apply his massive brain to the question whether "mike" is a "distinctly Jewish" spelling.)
And on a deeper, emotional level, "toast" is a warm, delicious word. Toast! We're toast! I love toast! Mmmm, toast! A toast to toast!
But what I really came here to opine about is the name-calling: Flake(y). Should a President be sticking names on everyone? I don't know but Trump doesn't do it to everyone. Only to those who hit him with a low blow. It is undignified, and I prefer the idea of going high when they go low, but that's not Trump. That's not what our favorite President does. (That's the name he's gotten me to start using for him. It's sticky.)
So let's move on to the question whether Flake(y) is a good name for Jeff Flake. "Flake" was already a funny name — already connoting flakiness — and Flake has lived and achieved with it. How can you make it more of an insult by adding "y"? Is it worse to be "flaky" than to be a "flake"? I think it's worse to be a flake, since it suggests it's the entirety of what you are as opposed to merely one of your attributes. (Reading the definition of "flaky/flakey" in the OED, I see that President Reagan called Qaddafi "flaky.")
But when I think about "Flakey," my first association is Flakey Foont!
Do you know what I'm talking about? Are you not up on Mr. Natural comics?
Mr. Natural has strange, magical powers and possesses cosmic insight; but he is also moody, cynical, self-pitying, and suffers from various strange sexual obsessions. He is endlessly being accosted by would-be disciples seeking the truth (among them such long-running Crumb characters as Flakey Foont and Shuman the Human). He typically regards them with amused condescension and a certain grudging affection, although his patience often wears thin and he takes sadistic pleasure in making them feel like idiots. While he is typically very cool and in control, he sometimes ends up in humiliating predicaments like languishing for years in a mental institution.
The really weird thing is thinking of Trump as Mr. Natural!
SEN. JEFF FLAKE: I think today conservatism has kind of been compromised by populism... So I think that just because we have the House, the Senate and the White House, we can’t rest easy and say that populism is a governing philosophy because I don’t believe that it is....
CHUCK TODD: Well, let me ask you this, what would you -- going in hindsight now -- what should the conservative movement have done in 2016 that they didn’t do?...
SEN. JEFF FLAKE: Well, I’m not denying that populism isn’t popular. That’s why it’s called populism. The problem is I think it’s first and foremost the duty of conservatives to tell the truth to the constituency and it’s easy to point to a shuttered factory and say, “Hey, if we’d just negotiated better trade deals, then those jobs would be there.” When really it’s automation and productivity gains. It’s much more complex and my concern is that populism is a sugar high and once you come off it, it’s particularly troublesome for the party. And so I wish that we would have been more truthful with the electorate in terms of what we can and what we cannot do in Washington....
The dictionary definition of "populism" is "The policies or principles of any of various political parties which seek to represent the interests of ordinary people." That's from the OED, which gives, as one of its examples, this sentence from Time Magazine from 1972:
Populism is a label that covers disparate policies and passions: among many others, New Deal reforms, consumer rage against business, ethnic belligerence.
I'm concerned about the expressions of contempt for ordinary people and democracy. I can see saying we need more structured principles and sane practicality, but it feels disrespectful to say "populism is a sugar high."
IN THE COMMENTS: CStanley has a solid, succinct answer to my question:
In the context of his full responses I thought he was saying that populism was a sugar high for the GOP because it's easier for them to get votes that way than to sell the harder truths. That seems less offensive than the way Althouse is interpreting it because it's a diss of the politicians, not the voters.
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