by Eric Lendrum
Former Senator Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) claimed on Thursday, without evidence, that “at least 35” Republicans in the Senate would vote to remove President Donald Trump from office “if there were a private vote,” Fox News reports.
Flake made the unsubstantiated claim during a Q&A session at the 2019 Texas Tribune Festival, where he remarked that he “heard someone say if there was a private vote there would be 30 Republican votes. That’s not true. There would be at least 35.”
The “someone” to whom Flake was referring was most likely Mike Murphy, a left-wing MSNBC commentator who recently claimed that “one Republican senator told me if it was a secret vote, 30 Republican senators would vote to impeach Trump.” Murphy similarly provided no evidence for his claim, and did not name which senator allegedly old him this.
The claims by Flake and Murphy come as an impeachment inquiry officially moves forward in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. Republicans in the Senate, contrary to Flake and Murphy’s claims, have voiced their unwavering opposition to any impeachment measures. If impeachment did pass the House and go to trial in the Senate, the Democrats would need to flip at least 20 Republicans to their side in order to remove President Trump from office.
As a senator, Flake was a frequent critic of President Trump, to the point that Trump even voiced support for Flake’s primary challenger Kelli Ward. With his approval ratings in Arizona plummeting as a result, Flake retired from the Senate instead of seeking re-election.
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Eric Lendrum graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was the Secretary of the College Republicans and the founding chairman of the school’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter. He has interned for Young America’s Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, and the White House, and has worked for numerous campaigns including the 2018 re-election of Congressman Devin Nunes (CA-22).
While I can understand the Democrats’ desire to impeach Trump (he and especially his underlings are easy for me to bitterly oppose), my gut instinct goes against any attempt to impeach Trump. I fear, particular at the present time, that it would only backfire and help Trump win re-election.
I say this because when the voters voted in a Democratic majority in the lower House and some new Democratic officeholders in the Senate, these voters sought a mandate for major DOMESTIC measure like affordable housing, affordable health care, protecting the world from global warming, pushing for more equitable law enforcement instead of the bigoted brand we have now, etc. Instead, the Democrat leadership (not the rank-and-file) have squandered this goodwill among their progressive base by capitulating to the Right on chief foreign/military policy issues like North Korea, Israel Aipac, Saudi Arabia’s human rights violations against neighboring countries, Venezuela, etc. Apparently, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi think that all they need to do is to appease conservative hawks on military and foreign policy issues while arrogantly taking their progressive rank-and-file and its electorate for granted by promising action on critical domestic issues without ever delivering. And the Democrats wonder why they are in such trouble!
Evidently, the leadership thinks that just because Harry Truman could get away in 1948 with tricking liberal and leftist voters into deserting the Progressive Party’s Henry Wallace and the G.O.P.’s Thomas Dewey, by pretending to support civil rights and the Fair Deal, that Pelosi and Schumer can pull this same rouse over progressives. Truman during this campaign suddenly toned down his Cold War rhetoric by pretending to be the peace candidate and by pretending to be leftist on domestic issues. Back then, such a pretense helped Truman to barely win the 1948 election. No sooner than after his re-election, however, he stabbed his liberal and leftist base in the back by pursuing more reckless confrontation with the Soviets and by making excuses to cop out on the Fair Deal and civil rights. The progressives have finally gotten wise to such duplicity by the Democratic Party leadership.
Former Senator Flake(y) need to get a life, This RINO from Arizona does not speak for the RNC. He is A sore loser.