The president*went off to Arizona on Tuesday night to what very well might be a powder magazine, and that's not even to mention the fact that the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate already has turned into something of a bloodbath. One of the most poignant images of the night when the TrumpCare bill went down in the Senate was Jeff Flake sitting forlornly next to his colleague, John McCain, as Alaska's Lisa Murkowski monopolized McCain until he was ready to vote down the unpopular bill for which Flake already had voted. Jeff Flake has developed a unique ability to position himself in the worst of two worlds.

Which is why he's currently engaged in a loud and unpleasant pissing match with Kelli Ward, a pure wingnut who once held a town meeting on the danger of chemtrails, and who is hitting Flake below the belt, after the bell, and out of bounds, all at the same time. From Business Insider:

In an ad from her campaign titled "Arizona Deserves Better," Ward blasted Flake for being featured in a Hillary Clinton campaign ad slamming Trump and calling for him to withdraw from the presidential race in response to the "Access Hollywood" tape, in which Trump boasted about groping women, that leaked in October. Ward's ad also appeared to tie Flake closely to President Barack Obama. As CNN's Andrew Kaczynski pointed out, the photo Ward's campaign used to make this assertion was of Flake shaking Obama's hand in the Oval Office. They were alongside Arizona's congressional delegation at a bill signing to honor the federal judge who was shot and killed in Tucson in 2011 during the attack on Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot but survived. A spokesman for Ward told Kaczynski that the observation was "silly" and that "the ad speaks for itself." "The message of the ad is that Senator Flake is not the conservative he claims to be, having aligned himself with Hillary Clinton and President Obama before and now opposing President Trump," the spokesman said. "The ad's design, including our image highlighting Flake and Obama, conveys this visually, which is the goal of the piece."

Shutterstock

Moreover, the president* has made his displeasure with Flake very public. So, in his own party, Flake finds himself hectored from the right and without a moderate base of any power. In this, Flake's predicament has a lot to do with this PPP poll that shows that Mitch McConnell's approval rating in Kentucky had dropped to 18 percent. This latest from The New York Times is unlikely to make McConnell's life easier.

Yet Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell are locked in a political cold war. Neither man would comment for this story. Don Stewart, a spokesman for Mr. McConnell, noted that the senator and the president had "shared goals," and pointed to "tax reform, infrastructure, funding the government, not defaulting on the debt, passing the defense authorization bill." In a series of tweets this month, Mr. Trump criticized Mr. McConnell publicly, then berated him in a phone call that quickly devolved into a profane shouting match. During the call, which Mr. Trump initiated on Aug. 9 from his New Jersey golf club, the president accused Mr. McConnell of bungling the health care issue. He was even more animated about what he intimated was the Senate leader's refusal to protect him from investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to Republicans briefed on the conversation.

This, admittedly, cannot be a tenable way to govern. However, as long as the unpopularity of Republican politicians depends as much on the anger of loyal Trump voters as it does on the general disgust with the administration, people like Jeff Flake are caught in a terrible whipsaw. So, it should be noted, is the country.

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io