Jeff Flakes (Of Course)

Just one week ago, retiring Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake was being hailed by braindead pundits as a hero who “changed the course of history” with his brave attempt to cover his own ass by requesting a last minute, extremely limited FBI investigation into allegations that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez.

On Friday, moments after casting his vote to advance Kavanaugh’s confirmation to a final floor vote in the Senate, Flake did it again by announcing that he plans to vote to place an accused sexual predator on the Supreme Court after all, telling reporters: “Unless something big changes—I don’t see what would.”

“But anyway I’m glad we had a better process,” Flake continued. “We needed a better process.”

I’m not entirely sure what Flake is referring to in his Gollum-esque effusiveness about the “processsssss.” Does he mean the grotesquely neutered FBI investigation into Ford’s claim that didn’t even bother to interview Ford (or Kavanaugh, for that matter) in the first place? Is he talking about his fellow Republicans’ angry post-investigation press conference, in which they proceeded to shit all over the media, Democrats, and Ford herself? Maybe he’s thinking of the fact that President Donald Trump spent the past week publicly mocking victims of sexual assault on Twitter and at a campaign rally?

Of course, this is Flake distilled to his flakiest: Talk a big game about civility and process and how gosh darn bad things have gotten in Washington and then vote with President Donald Trump and the rest of his party for a host of unnecessarily cruel, wholly partisan policies a whopping 84 percent of the time anyway.

When Flake finally steps down from his seat in January, the Senate will lose one of its most vocal, if entirely full of shit, kumbaya cheerleaders in recent years. But hey, at least the “process” is so much better, right?