Jeff Flake

They don't like it, but they're in it now.

If you had five or six states with open primary laws like Alaska has, that would create a whole different power structure in the Senate.

Yeah, if we had the Alaska style thing, I would have run for re-election.

I make the case for incrementalism.

Being a conservative means preserving conservative or institutions that work.

And the Senate has worked over time.

And so incrementalism is what you want.

That's why I like the filibuster, for example, because you...

It helps.

It doesn't cure it completely, but it helps from having wide swings of, you know, popular opinion back and forth like you have in the House.

And that has served the country well.

So I don't think that that's the problem.

I think I look at Joe Manchin was always in the middle of every bipartisan fight, every bill that looked for bipartisan support.

saying, hey, compromise is the coin of the realm here because you don't want to have these wide swings.

When I hear economic rage, you know, that kind of suggests that it's this very leftist, far left platform Mondami kind of thing.

That's what it speaks to me.

And I hope the Democrats don't do that because we need two strong parties.

And they would be responding to that subset of a subset of a subset of voters that votes in Democratic primaries, just like too many Republicans respond to that subset on the right.

But it doesn't...

It doesn't do much for the country, and it allows the Republicans to be more extreme than they could otherwise be.