In a Politico op-ed late last month, Jeff Flake, the pseudo-apostate Republican senator from Arizona, warned that his party was in “denial” about President Donald Trump. Conservatives, he wrote, “have maintained an unnerving silence as instability has ensued,” adding that this “unnerving silence in the face of an erratic executive branch is an abdication, and those in positions of leadership bear particular responsibility.” The press ate it up. “Flake makes waves with Trump takedown,” Politico declared days later. The Los Angeles Times called him the “one Republican willing to take on President Trump and his party’s ‘denial.’”

It is very unlikely that Flake particularly cares about winning plaudits from the establishment press or the left—not when his political career depends first and foremost on winning the GOP nomination in his own reelection campaign next year. But his reemergence as a vocal Trump critic, amid the collapse of his party’s legislative agenda, points to an awareness on his part that the president will be a drag on him and other similarly situated Republicans in general elections outside of throbbing-red Trump country.

There is nothing novel about down-ballot politicians attempting to distance themselves from their parties’ standard bearers, especially with hollow criticism. What makes Flake’s rendition unique is the irreducible nature of his criticisms. He isn’t calling out Trump for milquetoast sins like losing touch with the working class, or setting his legislative priorities in the wrong order. His recent broadsides against the administration more closely resemble establishment conservative efforts to expel Trump from Republican politics during the presidential primary than it does typical party frustrations with an unpopular president.

Considering Flake’s near-complete unwillingness to save himself or his party from what he describes as a serious threat, his half-hearted rebellion is a microcosm of the crisis that awaits Republicans if the Trump presidency collapses terminally. They won’t be left asking themselves, as Democrats are today, where they and the party went wrong, but explaining why they made a Faustian bargain with a known villain at unacceptable cost for the rest of us.

Flake’s recent trip off the reservation is doubly coincidental, timed as it is for the release of his new book, Conscience of a Conservative. But it is very hard to imagine Flake going about this rebranding exercise if Trump had been a capable steward of the GOP agenda or had managed to conduct himself less dishonorably–and thus enjoyed favorability numbers higher than the mid-30s.