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The editors of The Weekly Standard:

“We are left to conclude that Trump and his confreres wanted Flake defeated merely because Flake has said critical things about Trump. We expect this sort of vanity from Trump — it’s his brand and he owns it — but not from grown-up Republican officeholders and commentators.”

The editorial board of The Weekly Standard notes that it is puzzling why President Trump and his “celebrity allies” such as Stephen K. Bannon and Laura Ingraham were so keen on unseating Mr. Flake from his Arizona seat. After all, the editors note, while he may differ with the president on immigration and trade, “his views on foreign policy and national security are closer to Trump’s than, say, Lindsey Graham’s.” They conclude that the president and his defenders cannot abide a person who praises the leader when he’s right, and criticizes him when he’s wrong. Read more »

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Ben Domenech in The Federalist:

“Again: the G.O.P. as it was died in Cleveland. Flake’s decision authenticates this.”

Mr. Domenech has been arguing that Mr. Flake should not run for re-election since July. The reason, he writes, is that the senator from Arizona is “out of time, a vestige of the pre-Donald Trump fusionism of the Republican Party.” Mr. Flake choosing not to seek another term, writes Mr. Domenech, does not mark a “changing of the guard.” That’s because “Flake is not the guard, he’s more of a bystander to the guard, and he knows it.” Read more »

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Daniel Larison in The American Conservative:

“Almost all of Trump’s loudest intraparty critics are incapable or unwilling to ‘come to grips’ with the reasons why they lost their party.”

Mr. Larison addresses Ross Douthat’s column in The New York Times urging Mr. Trump’s critics to stand and fight. The problem with this argument, according to Mr. Larison, is that most of the president’s critics want to stand and fight for “the same bankrupt Bush-era agenda that did so much to bring them to their current position.” Writing for the noninterventionist American Conservative, Mr. Larison condemns a Republican party divided between “hawks and ultra-hawks.” “This is not a party that is interested in rethinking assumptions or learning from catastrophic errors,” he concludes. Read more »

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Jonah Goldberg in National Review:

“Flake and Corker — flawed as they may be — have simply been responding to the drama machine in the Oval Office. That is where all the drama is coming from.”

Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio host who has largely been supportive of the president, responded to the criticisms from Senators Bob Corker and Jeff Flake by emphasizing that they would not have gotten re-elected in this political climate. He then calls on everyone to stop the “drama.”

That’s at least how Mr. Goldberg summarizes Mr. Hewitt’s position. Mr. Goldberg takes issue with this argument, writing that “to excoriate Flake and Corker for their drama while remaining silent about Trump’s is the very definition of enabling.”