What, then, must be done?

Flake in January looking very concerned about the treatment of refugees in that #MuslimBan, photo by David Kadlubowski/The Republic in AZCentral. It strikes me that there were enough Senators, between him and Sasse and the Democrats, to make an effective noise against that depredation, except that the Majority Leader wasn't one of them and would never allow it, and if Flake wanted to actually accomplish something instead of displaying what a noble guy he is he should have been working on McConnell, not the uncomprehending Fox News viewer in the White House. 

What, then (NPR wanted to know), must be done, Senator Flake?

Asked by Steve whether he thinks "something needs to be done" about President Trump, the Arizona senator replies: "If you are asking if I think the president has committed high crimes or misdemeanors, I don't think so."

"And I don't think there is any Article 25 remedy," he says, referring to a clause in the U.S. Constitution that provides for removing a president who "is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office."

"I just think we just ought to stand up and require something better in terms of behavior and treatment of members of Congress and others, Gold Star families, you name it," Flake says. "But that doesn't have to involve any remedy like the 25th Amendment or impeachment proceedings."

Nothing that bad, for goodness sake. Just a little "casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals" (Flake's words, yesterday) and "reckless, outrageous, and undignified behavior" and "threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth or decency." Congress should "require something better."

Require how?

I just want everybody to understand, before they fall into a swoon over the courage of this empty suit, what an abject surrender he has just made (he emphasized in the interview that he's still excited about the work he wants to accomplish in his remaining time in the Senate, including "getting the deficit under control", when he just voted five days ago for a budget plan that raises the deficit a trillion and a half dollars, for fuck's sake, after eight years during which the Obama lowered the annual deficit by two thirds against Flake's, and all congressional Republicans', relentless and unbending opposition) and what a sanctimonious poser he really is. Is he going to sponsor a Sense of the Senate resolution? That'll show that Trump! ANY FURTHER DEPLORABLE CONDUCT WILL BE OFFICIALLY DEPLORED AND WE REALLY MEAN IT!

Steve M suggests Flake was going to have a near-impossible time getting reelected anyway, for reasons that go back before Trump (every step he could take to placate the insane Republican primary voters was going to make him less sustainable among the general Arizona public, where his approval rating was at 27% as of March 2014). We're going to be hearing more and more of this using Trump as a convenient excuse for Republican collapse, when Trump is actually a consequence of that.

All Our Base Are Belong to Sam Bee

Does Ross Douthat read The Rectification of Names? Redux.

The heretic Pelagius and his learned opponent St. John Chrysostom, depicted in the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1459, via Wikipedia.

Last time I thought he was borrowing my two-headed calf. This time Monsignor Ross Douthat, apostolic nuncio to 42nd Street, seems to have picked up ("Right-Wing Books, Wrong Answers") on my preoccupation with the execrable Trumpist wormtongue Dinesh D'Souza, and specifically the idea that that repellent poisonous newt has something in common with an apparently respectable Republican who angrily opposes Trump. But where I was thinking of former senator John Danforth and the party's misreading of American history, the Monsignor is picking on current senator Jeff Flake and the party's economic policy:

D’Souza’s book embodies the outrageous right-wing style that Flake’s book condemns. Which makes it all the more striking when D’Souza, the Trump-defending huckster, comes around to many of the same economic policy prescriptions as Flake, the Trump-abjuring would-be statesman. Whether in the name of honorable libertarianism or frenzied, “I’m not saying they’re Nazis, but they’re Nazis” anti-liberalism, the senator and the demagogue both
think that conservatives need to … cut social programs in order to cut taxes on the rich.

(And an "I'm not saying, I'm just saying" crack for good measure.)

I'm having trouble finding any statements on tax policy by D'Souza more recent than 1999, though The Economist pulled out this delicious bit in 2010—

Congratulations, America

TrumpCare is dead!

Goldwater would never vilify ethnic minorities. unless, you know, in order to get votes.

With all respect—well, some respect, I'm only human—to Senator McCain for his agonizing decision to vote for once the way he thinks instead of the way Mitch McConnell wants him to (Steve M thinks only the specter of possibly approaching death could have gotten him to do the ethical thing—funny to imagine the old reprobate is the only actual Christian, fearing God and Judgment, in the whole GOP), and some more respect to Senators Murkowski and Collins for doing it on a more regular basis as if they really believe that's what Senators are supposed to do, I think the momentousness of McConnell's defeat on Skinny Trumpcare is getting a little exaggerated.

I mean, because it really was inevitable that Trumpcare would be defeated, as I'd been hoping. As has been widely pointed out, the floor managers could only get as many votes for it as they did by promising the Senators that it would never become law, and billing the vote as merely a necessary first step to convening a conference committee to effectively write yet another new bill, but by now we've seen the full range of what they can come up with in the way of repealing the Affordable Care Act (which precludes doing it with any Democratic votes and thus requires 50 Republican ones). There just aren't any approaches that can get enough Republicans to vote for it, because the party doesn't have a coherent position on health care, and can't, really, as long as it seeks to bring together the wealthy libertarian and the poor nativist. Whatever came out of the conference wasn't going to be any different.

McCain's vote should be regarded as a kind of mercy killing of a freakish creature that just was not viable, a two-headed calf with a blocked intestine.