Jeff Flake: The Republican Fever Must Break

Opinion|Jeff Flake: In Today’s G.O.P., Voting Your Conscience Is Disqualifying

Eight years ago, I stood on the floor of the Senate and announced that I would not run for re-election. I spoke then of a fever in our politics, a fever that I hoped would soon break. I noted that in today’s Republican Party, anything short of complete and unquestioning loyalty to President Trump — then in his first term — was deemed unacceptable and suspect.

Last weekend, Senator Thom Tillis announced that he would not seek re-election, and delivered a message that echoed my own. “It’s become increasingly evident,” he said, “that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species.”

His decision underscores what I feared in 2017: The fever still hasn’t broken. In today’s Republican Party, voting your conscience is essentially disqualifying.

When I was first elected to the House, in 2000, there was room in the G.O.P. for independent judgment. There were plenty of occasions when I voted against President George W. Bush’s agenda, including on No Child Left Behind and the Medicare prescription drug benefit. But President Bush never took it personally. He understood that members of Congress might differ with him and one another on policy without questioning their loyalty. Later, when I was in the Senate, he even came to Arizona to help raise money for my last, abbreviated campaign.

Contrast that with the party under President Trump. Any deviation from his dictates is treated as apostasy. It’s no longer about ideas or governing philosophies. It’s about personal allegiance to a single man, whose positions can shift by the day.

That’s what makes Senator Tillis’s retirement so telling. He could have easily won a general election in North Carolina. But to get there, he would have needed to survive an almost certain primary challenge that would demand he demonstrate absolute fealty to President Trump — something that often requires toeing a constantly shifting line and frequently leads away from responsible governance.