# Jeff Flake

- Quotes: 5
- Author page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/jeff-flake

## Books

- [Conscience of a Conservative](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jeff-flake/conscience-of-a-conservative.md) — 5 quotes

## Recently added quotes

> The meetings with Mexican officials were planned before the election, but they took on even greater significance after Trump's win. But even before the election, it was obvious that my party had taken a sharp turn away from the conservative principles that have defined it for nearly a century and that I have tried to uphold for my entire life. And the animating question of how this had happened to my party already seemed to be a profound problem for our democracy, and one badly in need of a solution. I write this book because we as conservatives — and conservatism itself — are in crisis.

p. 6 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jeff-flake/conscience-of-a-conservative/the-meetings-with.md)

> We have given in to the politics of anger — the belief that riling up the base can make up for failed attempts to broaden the electorate. These are the spasms of a dying party. Anger and resentment and blaming groups of people for our problems might work politically in the short term, but it's a dangerous impulse in a pluralistic society, and we know from history that it's an impulse that, once acted upon, never ends well.

p. 8 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jeff-flake/conscience-of-a-conservative/we-have-given.md)

> But it is one thing to keep your adversaries or your "near-peer" competitors off balance with strategic unpredictability and quite another to keep the American people themselves similarly at a loss as to what exactly is going on, which is now a daily occurrence, to say nothing at all about the vexation on the part of many of our traditional allies all over the world. I began writing this book after returning from a trip to Mexico City on a one-senator diplomatic mission to calm and reassure the nation to our south — a vitally important friend and trading partner — that all will be well, that America is still America. But is it?

p. 6 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jeff-flake/conscience-of-a-conservative/but-it-is-one.md)

> By any honest assessment of where we are as a party, without a major course correction, we are simply on the way out. The demographic picture of America is rapidly changing, and we have to change with it. George W. Bush got 56 percent of the white vote, and won. Mitt Romney got 59 percent of the white vote, and lost. Every four years in this country, the electorate gets about two percentage points less white; as an increasingly old and increasingly white party, we are skidding with each passing election toward irrelevance in terms of appealing to a broad electorate. We hold out our hand, expecting our share of nonwhite votes, and yet we give these Americans too few reasons to come our way. Instead, we demonize them, marginalize them, and blame them for our country's problems. We all knew of this before the last election, but we quickly set it aside for the sugar high of populism, nativism, and demagoguery. The crash from this sugar high will be particularly unpleasant.

p. 8 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jeff-flake/conscience-of-a-conservative/by-any-honest.md)

> But in the tweeting life of our president, strategy is difficult to detect. Influencing news cycles seems to be the principal goal; achieving short-term advantage, you bet. But ultimately, it's all noise and no signal. And in the absence of preparation and a well-considered strategy — especially when one is moving global chess pieces — volatile unpredictability is not a virtue. We have quite enough volatile actors to deal with internationally as it is without becoming one of them.

p. 6 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jeff-flake/conscience-of-a-conservative/but-in-the.md)