But I always thought I could detect doubt just beneath the surface of these faithful civic sermons of his—and this time was no different.

Maybe Flake is right, and what we’re seeing unfold in this ugly moment of American history is an aberration. Maybe what the country is waiting for is someone to “reawaken [its] conscience,” as Flake wrote in Washington Post op-ed—someone decent and honest who can deliver a “shock to the system” and remind us all “who we are supposed to be.” Maybe that person will be a liberated lame-duck senator who spends his final year in office bravely speaking truth to presidential power. Maybe that senator, although temperamentally averse to bare-knuckled political brawling, will decide that’s what it will take it to prevail. And maybe, just maybe, he will get a chance to run for president himself in the not-too-distant future.

But what we know for sure, today, is that a senator who saw himself as fighting for the soul of his party has been chased off the battlefield, forced into retreat. In the profile I wrote in September, I asked: Is there no longer a place in politics for someone like Jeff Flake? This week, it seems, he gave us the answer.