The Washington Post reports: Sen. Jeff Flake has been getting a lot of attention for his attacks on President Trump, Trump the candidate — and the senator’s own Republican Party for abetting both in recent months.

His argument is a wide-ranging conservative manifesto against Trumpism.

Against the president’s “seeming affection for strongmen and authoritarians,” as Flake wrote for Politico this week.

And against the White House’s demonization of Muslims and Mexicans, Flake (Ariz.) writes in his new book, “Conscience of a Conservative.”

And “a far-right press that too often deals in unreality,” and right-wing voters’ celebration of anger and a Republican Party that “abandoned its core principles” in the course of a single year in 2016.

And on and on goes this list of conservative betrayals in the past two years.

But Sunday, as he promoted his book on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Flake took his assault on Trumpism back years further — all the way to the pre-dawn of Trump’s political rise, to “when the birtherism thing was going on,” as Flake put it to host Chuck Todd. [Continue reading…]