Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) on Thursday broke with Republican colleagues who welcomed Alabama Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore and said he was “troubled” by some of Moore’s controversial past remarks.
Moore in 2006 said that Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim elected to Congress, should not be sworn in because the Quran was incompatible with the Constitution, a position Flake said Republicans should disagree with vocally.
“When somebody says that members of our body, the Congress, the House of Representatives, shouldn’t be there, and to try and apply a religious test, that’s not right, and Republicans ought to stand up and say, that’s not right,” Flake said at the Washington Ideas Forum, CBS News reported.
Flake said he was “troubled” by some of Moore’s remarks.
“I think that when we disagree with something so fundamental like that, we ought to stand up and say, that’s not right, that’s not our party, that is not us,” he said.
President Donald Trump and Flake’s congressional colleagues were far more welcoming to Moore, despite his high-profile controversial remarks. Among those: Moore in 2005 called for a ban on “homosexual conduct” and compared it to bestiality and more recently, in February, he suggested that the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks were a form of divine punishment.
