Arizona has had enough of Jeff Flake’s partisan nonsense

One year after the inauguration of President Trump, America’s constitutional system is alive and well — despite the somewhat hysterical claims that Arizona’s junior Sen. Jeff Flake (R) made today on the floor of the Senate.

America’s constitutional republic has endured longer than any other on Earth in large part thanks to the system of checks and balances devised by our founding fathers, and the individual liberties outlined in the Bill of Rights that our system was designed to protect.

Today’s unified Republican control of the nation’s legislative and executive branches continues to deliver tangible results for the American people, including a historic rollback of federal taxes, and the reversal of destructive regulations that needlessly shackled the American economy.

{mosads}And, despite Republicans being in charge at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, our constitutional system of checks and balances is working well. The House and Senate are both conducting oversight of the executive branch, including an investigation of Russia’s involvement in American election campaigns and public discourse. 

Unfortunately, journalists continually report “news” that scrutinizes every action of the president, even down to his preferred beverages, his precise weight and other inane details. Some of that reporting has turned out to be inaccurate and, in response, the president has been fully justified in calling out instances of journalistic malpractice.

Conservatives have been pointing to liberal partiality in the mainstream media for decades. The Media Research Center, led by conservative champion Brent Bozell, reports each day on the anti-conservative bias exhibited by much of the traditional mainstream media based in Washington, D.C. and New York.

Never before have conservatives had such a champion in the White House who was willing to challenge the dominance of the mainstream media and push back against it as hard as Trump. 

Flake’s comments this morning to a nearly empty Senate chamber — it’s been reported that only two of his colleagues were present — were misguided and inappropriate. By comparing Trump to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin on the Senate floor, he exacerbated the very coarsening of civil discourse that he claims to oppose. To Flake, not even the Senate floor can be reserved for debate at a level worthy of our republic.

While politics isn’t for the faint of heart, Jeff Flake should not lower the standard for the floor of the world’s greatest deliberative body by comparing Donald Trump, the democratically elected president of the United States, to the murderous leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, who was responsible for the murder of 20 million people.

During the Great Purge of 1936 to 1938, historians estimate between 600,000 and 1.7 million Soviet citizens lost their lives to tactics that included mobile gas vans used to execute dissenters on the spot. Meanwhile, in 2018, American news networks attack Trump for eating at McDonald’s and contemplate whether he wears dentures or not. 

Republican National Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel accurately pointed out the absurdity of Flake’s claims today.

Sen. Flake, turn on the news. It’s wall-to-wall with biased coverage against @POTUS. He has every right to push back. Comparing the leader of the free world to murderous dictators is absurd. You’ve gone too far.

— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) January 17, 2018

Conservative activist Gabriella Hoffman, whose grandfather was imprisoned by Stalin, put it this way: “Trump doesn’t have a cozy relationship with the press nor does he manipulate them in a state-run fashion as Stalin did. Neither does he imprison, torture, or kill his political opponents like Stalin did. You may not like his governing style or brazen use of Twitter, but Trump’s no Stalin. Not in the slightest. Stop with this nonsense once and for all.”

Later this year, Americans will return to the polls. They will decide whether Republicans should retain their congressional majorities and continue to implement the president’s agenda to make America great again, or if House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) will be in charge instead. Republicans in both chambers must denounce the nonsense that we witnessed from Sen. Flake today, and instead focus on implementing real solutions to the challenges that hard-working Americans face every day.

Dr. Kelli Ward (@KelliWardAZ) is an osteopathic physician who served two terms as an Arizona state senator. Ward is running as a Republican for Arizona’s open U.S. Senate seat in 2018.