Responses to Jeff Flake's Retirement Speech

Every communication student learns that a message is never complete until someone receives and interprets it. Just as every speaker brings his or her knowledge, attitudes, and experience to the speech, so every audience responds in terms of their own previous experience, attitudes, and values. Jeff Flake's dramatic retirement speech, which I wrote about earlier today, generated responses across a wide field. In that speech, Flake criticized President Donald Trump's behavior as "reckless, outrageous, and undignified." I will sort the responses into three categories: people who thought that Flake gave a great speech, people who think he should have done even more, and people who thought his speech was awful.

Let us start with the positive responses. CNN Editor-at-Large Chris Cillizza called Flake's speech "a clarion call to the governing wing of the Republican Party to wake up from the fever of Trumpism." He continued that Flake had given "the most important political speech of 2017 – and one of the most powerful political speeches in the modern era of the Senate." Sounding sad, Cillizza thought that "it is uniquely possible that it will not change a thing." Noting that Flake faced a difficult primary challenge from an even more conservative opponent, Slate's Jim Newell said that Flake "admitted that in order to win the primary, he would have to become a hard-right, bullying caricature." Commenting on Flake's speech, an editorial in the Baltimore Sun lamented that the rise of "Trumpism" was "the logical conclusion of a cynical bargain Republicans have pursued over the years to stoke cultural resentments as a means of rallying voters who do not benefit from the party’s real priorities of cutting taxes for the wealthy and removing constraints on corporations." The editorial did express, hopefully, that Flake's speech could be one of the first steps on the difficult path to a new, more functional political reality." Conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin said that Flake spoke "with a moral clarity we have rarely seen among his fellow elected Republicans — and never from GOP leadership on Capitol Hill."

Writing in the Washington Post, Stephen Krupin, a Democrat, complained that, although Flake was wise to complain about Trump's governing approach, he gave up: "Then he surrendered." His point was that, by leaving the Senate, Flake was giving up his chance to influence public decisions.

The conservative media, however, found Flake's speech appalling. Breitbart's Tony Lee gleefully reported that Flake's retirement was "another scalp" for alt-right leader Stephen Bannon, President Trump's former White House advisor. Conservative commentator Bill Kristol tweeted:

"Flake took on Trump.
Trump & Bannon took on Flake.
Flake's gone."

I guess that made a point – a point in which power and success measure one's moral qualities.

Complaining that "Republican voters don't appreciate an out of touch loon who lectures them every other week,"  Jim Hoft, in the popular conspiracy theory website Gateway Pundit, described Flake's speech as an "annoying screed." Of course, we do not want to miss President Trump's Twitter responses, which speak for themselves:

So, depending on their political perspectives, different listeners reacted to Senator Flake's speech in much different ways. It is unreasonable to think that one speech will change everything. All the same, Senator Flake stimulated a great deal of public controversy about President Trump's leadership methods. What will come of this, good or bad? Time will tell.

I have seen comparisons between Flake's speech and speeches responding to Senator Joseph McCarthy. Instead, I thought about John Kennedy's best-selling book, Profiles in Courage. Kennedy's book talks about courageous actions that United States Senators took at the risk of their careers. Such courage seems like a pipe dream today, does it not? Today, politicians seem to adjust their opinions according to the latest polls, and not according to any moral compass. Yet, even Senator Flake did not think he could run for re-election and still speak freely.