Princess Myrtle, Jeff Flake, and Personal Responsibility

Princess Myrtle was, no doubt, in the audience as my lame duck Senator smiled his way through a truly terrifying speech about a democracy in trouble.

He must have assumed that there were no Trump supporters in the crowd, or else he didn't care.  After all, he had a platform.  It didn't matter that he might be hijacking somebody's graduation for his own self-aggrandizement.

Of course, he reassured them, we'll get through this.  How can he be sure?  He's leaving a position of great power, not bothering to run as a non-Trump conservative Republican in this red state.  It felt fairly crass of him to exhort those new lawyers to take action when he has done absolutely nothing to stop the moral vandalism he decries. 

He could have been a Howard Baker, a Republican Senator willing to stand up to his party's President.  Instead, he turned tail and ran.  He left Arizona without meaningful representation in the upper chamber.  He opened the primary to a host of would-be-Trumps, setting up a very interesting election season. 

Asking others to take personal responsibility while abdicating it yourself - that might be the motto of our current crop of politicians.