No Greater Offense Than Honesty: Former GOP Senator Jeff Flake Pens Scathing Op-Ed Against His Party

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Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 02:51 pm

When Donald Trump first took office, there was little Republican resistance against him. There was John McCain of course. There was also push-back from Tennessee’s Bob Corker.

But Jeff Flake was commonly the loudest Republican voice against Trump. The Arizona lawmaker retired in 2018 and has continued to distance himself from the GOP. Flake announced that he was endorsing Joe Biden for president in August of last year.

And the lawmaker has continued to speak out about what’s become of his party. On Tuesday, he wrote a scathing Washington Post op-ed about the treatment of Liz Cheney.

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Flake began, “She (Cheney) will lose her position because she is refusing to play her assigned role in propagating the ‘big lie’ that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. Cheney is more dedicated to the long-term health of our constitutional system than she is to assuaging the former president’s shattered ego, and for her integrity she may well pay with her career.”

The former senator continued, “No, this is not the plot of a movie set in an asylum. Ladies and gentlemen, this is your contemporary Republican Party, where today there is no greater offense than honesty.”

Flake closed, “When I became an unwitting dissident in my party by speaking in defense of self-evident truths, I assumed that more and more of my colleagues would follow me. I remain astonished that so few did. Congresswoman Cheney, I know how alone you must be feeling. But just know that history keeps the score, not Kevin McCarthy or Elise Stefanik.

Unfortunately for both Flake and Cheney, they are the exceptions to the rule in today’s GOP. And most Republicans aren’t comfortable speaking like this unless they’re retired like Flake.

Read the full op-ed here

Todd Neikirk

Todd Neikirk is a New Jersey based politics and technology writer. His work has been featured in psfk.com, foxsports.com and hillreporter.com. He enjoys sports, politics, comic books and spending time at the shore with his family.