Eight years ago, I stood on the floor of the Senate and announced that I would not run for re-election. I spoke then of a fever in our politics, a fever that I hoped would soon break. I noted that in today’s Republican Party, anything short of complete and unquestioning loyalty to President Trump — then in his first term — was deemed unacceptable and suspect.
Last weekend, Senator Thom Tillis announced that he would not seek re-election, and delivered a message that echoed my own. “It’s become increasingly evident,” he said, “that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species.”
His decision underscores what I feared in 2017: The fever still hasn’t broken. In today’s Republican Party, voting your conscience is essentially disqualifying.
When I was first elected to the House, in 2000, there was room in the G.O.P. for independent judgment. There were plenty of occasions when I voted against President George W. Bush’s agenda, including on No Child Left Behind and the Medicare prescription drug benefit. But President Bush never took it personally. He understood that members of Congress might differ with him and one another on policy without questioning their loyalty. Later, when I was in the Senate, he even came to Arizona to help raise money for my last, abbreviated campaign.
Contrast that with the party under President Trump. Any deviation from his dictates is treated as apostasy. It’s no longer about ideas or governing philosophies. It’s about personal allegiance to a single man, whose positions can shift by the day.
That’s what makes Senator Tillis’s retirement so telling. He could have easily won a general election in North Carolina. But to get there, he would have needed to survive an almost certain primary challenge that would demand he demonstrate absolute fealty to President Trump — something that often requires toeing a constantly shifting line and frequently leads away from responsible governance.
There are political costs to this dynamic. After I left the Senate, my seat in reliably Republican Arizona flipped to the Democrats. We’ve seen similar outcomes in other states when less partisan-minded senators retire or are pushed aside. A party driven more by personal loyalty than by principle risks alienating the broader electorate.
But the deeper concern isn’t about any single congressional race or even the balance of power in the Senate — it’s about the long-term health of our political institutions. As senators like Thom Tillis step aside, the chamber grows ever more polarized. There are fewer and fewer members willing to reach across the aisle, take tough votes or engage in the quiet, unglamorous work of real legislating.
The Senate was once known as the world’s greatest deliberative body, a place where differences were debated, compromises forged and political courage sometimes rewarded. Today, it too often amplifies the loudest voices and calcifies the most rigid loyalties.
Extreme partisanship has infected both parties, but it plays out differently. Among Democrats, it tends to be issue-driven — focused on ambitious policy goals, however unrealistic or out of step they may sometimes be. Among Republicans, it’s become personality-driven, centered almost entirely on staying in lock step with the president. That’s an even more dangerous trajectory, because it divorces political allegiance from any stable set of principles. When a party’s North Star is an individual, the direction of policy and the integrity of governance itself suffer.
I admire Senator Tillis for choosing not to betray his convictions just to secure another term. But his departure is a loss for the nation, the Senate and the Republican Party — indeed, for conservatism — which desperately need more voices willing to stand on principle rather than bend to one man’s will.
The question facing Republicans still in the Senate is what to do about it. Is it better to stand your ground from within, refusing to bend even under intense primary pressure, knowing you may lose your seat but help restore a standard of principled dissent? Or to break openly with your party and run as an independent, showing voters there is another way to serve? Or, as some of us have done, to step aside entirely, yet continue pressing for the values of decency, truth and constitutional balance from outside the chamber?
A good case can be made for each of these paths. None offer certainty. But doing nothing — simply going along to get along — guarantees the fever won’t break anytime soon. It ensures that the loudest voices will keep drowning out those who would govern responsibly. The Senate and our country need more leaders willing to pay a political price to uphold what they know is right. In the long run, that is the only way this fever ends.
Holding public office is a privilege — but it’s not worth sacrificing who you are. The Senate, and the nation it serves, is best led by those who remember that.
Jeff Flake is a former U.S. senator and representative from Arizona. He served as the U.S. ambassador to Turkey during President Joe Biden’s administration.
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