America’s second-least-popular senator is ending his tenure not with a bang but a bawling declaration that in the name of resistance (that he had two years to progress), he will finally, at last, stand up to Trump and refuse to vote for … judicial nominees.
After serving two years in the Senate while Trump occupied the White House, Flake could have led a popular movement to reclaim tariff powers back to the legislature or provide a viable Obamacare alternative rather than wait in the limelight during the disastrous rollout of the haphazard skinny repeal bill. Instead, Flake has chosen the Trump administration’s most conservative agenda, judicial appointments, to tackle a problem that could have been dealt with a year ago: protecting special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Flake announced to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that he refuses to vote on any of his judicial nominees either pending in the Judiciary Committee or on the Senate floor until the Mueller protection bill is brought for a vote.
Consider the 11th hour timing, the considerably low stakes, and the outlandishly high collateral, and you have pure political posturing.
Although McConnell has already rejected bringing the bill to a vote, considering that Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., himself has promised to vote “yes” on the bill if it ever does make it to the floor, it doesn’t seem like Flake’s is a tall ask.
If anything, it’s vintage Jeff Flake: a grand tableau vivant of opposing Trump, while sacrificing basically nothing to get it.
