Jeff Flake's Mormonism sense of decency and comity would be something we evangelicals ought to learn from. While Mormon children memorize the song "Choose the Right" us evangelicals learned "Jesus Loves Me". We may deny it, but evangelical culture is very self-centered. In our worship we praise God and sang how great He is and how He loves and protects us to the point of tears. We hardly do "What will Jesus do?" even though some years back we claimed that as mantra. Apparently the mantra proved too difficult and we conveniently discarded it. We revel in prosperity gospel that worship mammon. We love and revel in worldly power. That's why we had no problem cast our lot with Donald Trump in spite of his crassness. In so many ways in the last forty years we had already immersed ourselves in crassness but won't admit it. So in spite of casting Mormonism as a cult, we should learn this element from the Mormon culture which we direly lacked.
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Former GOP Sen. Jeff Flake says he will not vote for Trump
Kaelan Deese
Former U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said in a new interview that he will not vote for President Trump in November, citing concerns going back before the 2016 campaign.
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Flake also said that a second Trump term could turn younger voters away from the Republican Party, pointing to issues including immigration and the environment.
"So for young people who've grown up around minorities or had a different experience than a lot of us in my generation, they don't harbor, I think, some of the prejudices that people in my generation do," Flake said.
He added that a Trump defeat in November would be a "long-term" benefit for the Republican Party and "conservatism as well."
"This won't be the first time I've voted for a Democrat — though not for president. Last time I voted for a third-party candidate," he said. "But I will not vote for Donald Trump."
He also predicted that the GOP would change once Trump is out of the Oval Office.
"The pendulum swings when one party takes it too far," he said. "We'll be ourselves again."
Flake, 57, served in the U.S. Senate from 2013 to 2019, and was in the House of Representatives for six terms prior to that.
As a senator, he criticized Trump on multiple issues, including the president's negative comments about Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2015.
Flake was also "shocked" to find out his friend and former House colleague, Mike Pence, was nominated as Trump's running mate in 2016, according to Politico.
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Flake’s Speech Bore Marks of Mormon Faith, Not Just Politics
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He had no trouble recalling the hymn’s words on the telephone Wednesday, a day after he took to the floor of the Senate to deliver a stinging rebuke to his party and president, and to announce that he would not run for re-election in 2018.
His decision was political and pragmatic, he acknowledged: he faced a tough primary battle and trailed in the polls. But his revulsion at President Trump also appeared to reflect his Mormon faith. It is a faith that puts a premium on decorum and comity, one that was born in America but is increasingly international and multicultural, and one whose young people often wear rings engraved “CTR” as a reminder of the hymn, which begins, “Choose the right when a choice is placed before you.”
Mormons are also accustomed to testifying in public at monthly meetings, sometimes offering passionate stories of personal revelation.
“We are taught that we ought to stand up for what we know is right, and also to be decent,” Mr. Flake said in the telephone interview. “I hope I’m acting on the faith that I believe in.”
Mr. Flake came out early in the presidential primaries as an opponent of Mr. Trump, and unlike many in his party, he has remained a vocal critic, despite representing a state where the president is still popular. Although he has generally voted with Mr. Trump and the Republican majority in the Senate, he chastised his party on Tuesday for acquiescing in the lying and divisiveness that he said had come from the White House.
“Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as ‘telling it like it is,’ when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified,” Mr. Flake said in his 17-minute floor speech. “And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else. It is dangerous to a democracy.”
Steve Evans, a Salt Lake City lawyer who writes about Mormon topics on the website By Common Consent, said it was no coincidence that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints like Mr. Flake and Mitt Romney would be among “the major headliners of anti-Trumpism.”
“This is borne out of a strong sense of personal morality, but also out of a cultural sense of decorum,” Mr. Evans said. “Mormons are prudes both privately and publicly. But there is also strong scriptural teaching behind it all. The Book of Mormon warns the reader that America is a choice land, that we must be careful in choosing our leaders, and the judgments of God can come on a people that choose evil leaders. Religious teachings like these may be informing their worldview.”
In Pointed Speech, Jeff Flake Says He Won’t Seek Re-election
Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona said he would be leaving the Senate at the end of his term because to stay would cause him to compromise too many of his principles.
Mr. Trump’s candidacy for president ran into considerable antipathy in heavily Mormon Utah, where Republican candidates usually coast to victory. Evan McMullin, a Mormon and a former C.I.A. officer and policy director for House Republicans who ran as an independent in 2016, received 21 percent of the vote in the state. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate, won 27 percent, so altogether, more Utahans voted against Mr. Trump (48 percent) than for him (45 percent).
Max Perry Mueller, an assistant professor of American religion at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said he heard so many religious overtones in Mr. Flake’s speech that he plans to set aside his next planned lesson for the American religious history class he teaches, and instead have his students deconstruct the senator’s remarks “as a Mormon speech.”
Professor Mueller said the speech reminded him of the cadence, tone and themes that Mormon leaders often use when addressing the church’s vast general conference meetings in Salt Lake City, calling on members to refuse to accommodate the immorality of the larger world.
“That speech reflects a Mormon understanding of human agency and participation in history, that humans bring about change, and move the world towards perfection,” said Professor Mueller, the author of “Race and the Making of the Mormon People.”
In one passage near the end of his speech, Mr. Flake said: “This spell will eventually break. That is my belief. We will return to ourselves once more, and I say, the sooner the better. Because we have a healthy government, we must also have healthy and functioning parties. We must respect each other again in an atmosphere of shared facts and shared values, comity and good faith. We must argue our positions fervently and never be afraid to compromise.”
In the telephone interview, Mr. Flake spoke of his deep involvement with his church, of serving as a missionary in South Africa and Zimbabwe in the 1980s, and of rarely missing a Sunday service with his family in Mesa, Ariz., over his 17 years in Congress.
But he emphasized that he did not want to imply that he received any direction in his political choices from his church or its leaders. Doug Andersen, a spokesman for the church, said it had a longstanding policy of political neutrality and would make no comment.
For the note of optimism that he struck at the end of his floor speech, Mr. Flake said he drew on a family motto that his parents had posted on the refrigerator at home: “Assume the best, always look for the good.”
“That certainly is informed by our faith,” he said, “and who we ought to be.”
He said he had to remind himself that in the end, what will matter more than his status or his job will be choosing what is right, as the hymn says.
“That’s what I’ve tried to do,” he said. “I don’t always succeed.”
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