He says he is concerned about the Republican Party, but ‘my country is more important’
By Dan Nowicki | The Republic
en. Jeff Flake delivered a blistering attack on President Donald Trump and the general degradation of politics in a Friday speech to business leaders in the state that hosts the first-in-the-nation presidential primary.
Flake introduced himself to the influential Granite State as a conservative in the tradition of Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater who now finds himself maligned on the right as a Republican-In-Name-Only because he isn’t in lockstep with Trump.
“I stand before you, the rarest of species: the American Conservative,” Flake said in well-received remarks on the campus of Saint Anselm College. “’Americanus NeverTrumpus. Subgenus: RINO.’ There’s a scurrilous rumor afoot that we’re not only rare but endangered. I don’t believe it.”
Flake, who wrote a book last year titled “Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle,” recalled that he “killed earmarks” while a member of the House of Representatives, scored a perfect 100 with the fiscally conservative group the Club for Growth and has a 94 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union.
“And I’m the RINO,” Flake deadpanned. “It’s like ‘The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.’ What have they done with all the conservatives?”
