Flake is an arch conservative. That is his political ideology and he votes that way—always and forever. It's why we would never vote for him.
But that is separate from his ideas about personal rectitude. He opposes Trump because of his character and his use of lies ... and, don't forget this, because he doesn't think Trump is an actual conservative. So that's kind of consistent.
Just because he doesn't like Trump is no reason for anyone to start liking him or to vote for him. He's still an arch conservative. Just as when someone like Pat Buchanan was against the war in Iraq--he was still not our friend, and his reasons for opposing the war were very different from ours; he was purveyor of a vile and totally unacceptable political world view. It's possible to be on the same side regarding an issue or an individual, but still be unacceptable. It doesn't mean that Pat Buchanan was not against the war, or that Flake has not been consistently anti-Trump.
Still, Flake did have some good zings, as did the NYT book reviewer:
His approval ratings in his home state, Arizona, are so low they are somewhere down in a missile silo; according to Politico, the president has privately said he would spend $10 million in the Republican primary to whisk Flake out of the Senate with a broom.
Then again, maybe this is what a man who’s facing political expiration does: speaks his mind, goes for broke. Or perhaps he’s simply fed up. Flake was one of the few Never Trumpers in Congress to remain so right through Election Day.
Whatever his reasons, Flake has gone “Bulworth” on us . . .
Flake calls the president’s Twitter posts “all noise and no signal,” then adds: “Volatile unpredictability is not a virtue. We have quite enough volatile actors to deal with internationally as it is without becoming one of them.”
That is on Page 5. On Page 6, he notes that Trump is in the regular habit of destabilizing the American people, not just foreign leaders. On Page 29, he says the word “Orwellian” “seems quaint now, inadequate to our moment.” On Page 30, he denounces the “embrace of ‘alternative facts’ at the highest levels of American life,” adding that it “creates a state of confusion, dividing us along fissures of truth and falsity and keeping us in a kind of low-level dread.”
He also offers a shockingly astute insight into Trump’s modus operandi — and modus vivendi — during the presidential campaign. “Far from conservative,” Flake writes, “the president’s comportment was rather a study in the importance of conflict in reality television — that once you introduce conflict, you cannot de-escalate conflict. You must continually escalate.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/books/jeff-flake-conscience-of-conservative-trump.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbooks&action=click&contentCollection=books®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront
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