Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake has a new book out, and it's drawing more attention than the usual political tome. The Republican is critical of his own party, the conservative movement, and, most of all, President Trump. "Volatile unpredictability is not a virtue," he writes in Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle. Coverage:
- Off track: Flake tells NPR that things were starting to go off track when he arrived in Washington in 2001 as conservatives embraced big-government ideas such as President Bush's No Child Left Behind plan. "When we couldn't argue that we were the party of limited government anymore, then that forced us into issues like flag burning or trying to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case, things that we wouldn't have done otherwise if we would have been arguing about true principles of limited government or spending." All this laid the groundwork for Trump, he writes.
- In 'denial': In an excerpt at Politico, Flake accuses Republicans of being in denial at the lack of "normalcy" in the Trump White House. He explains his own rationale: "So as I layered in my defense mechanisms, I even found myself saying things like, 'If I took the time to respond to every presidential tweet, there would be little time for anything else.' Given the volume and velocity of tweets from both the Trump campaign and then the White House, this was certainly true. But it was also a monumental dodge." He also says the president's tweets are "all noise and no signal."