On the same day that Hillary Clinton was rocked by a veritable hurricane of fresh scandal, Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake did his best to help out her campaign and called for the Republican National Committee to abandon Trump.

Flake argued the RNC should take resources away from Donald Trump and instead focus them on Republican Senate races. Appearing on the local Arizona Horizon program, Flake said there were parallels between Trump 2016 and Bob Dole’s ill-fated 1996 bid.

“[Dole] had full support of the Republican Party.”

“[Dole] had full support of the Republican Party. That wasn’t enough, and he wasn’t gonna get there and everybody knew it by the time we got to September, particularly October,” Flake said.

“So the Senate committee [the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC)] spent a lot of time focusing on the Senate, as did the overall Republican committees, the RNC, just to make sure that they were shored up,” he said.

But Flake’s own analogy contradicts his point. As he himself noted, Dole had the full support of the GOP, something Flake and his ilk are withholding from Trump.

Trump will certainly face a greater chance of losing by a large margin if Republicans continue to criticize their own candidate using liberal talking points, providing the Clinton campaign with useful ammunition.

And if Trump does lose in a landslide, it’s not going to help the chances of John McCain (R-Ariz.) or Rob Portman (R-Ohio) or Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) or Pat Toomey (R-Penn.) — or any endangered GOP incumbent who seems to think attacking Trump will earn them votes. All the money in the world won’t save the Senate in the long run if the presidential election is a blowout.

Moreover, given the political and social context of the times, and Bill Clinton’s intense popularity, the mild-mannered moderate Dole stood little chance against Clinton. In 2016, however, the dynamic between Trump and Hillary Clinton is completely different.

Flake speaks as if a landslide loss for Trump is a foregone conclusion, but there is no reason to suggest this is the case. In just the last week, several polls have seen Trump bounce back into national contention.

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“I can tell you, it’s gonna be tough to see, if we see Hillary Clinton in office appointing Supreme Court nominees,” Flake said. Of course, if Flake were as worried about seeing Clinton in office as he implies, he’d be supporting Trump.

It’s one thing for ideologues like Bill Kristol, who see the GOP as a vehicle for their own neocon agenda, to attack Trump. But for GOP politicians to do so during the height of a national election is indefensible.

“Some people think that he’ll change. I hope that he does, I’d like to be able to support him,” Flake said. “I’m not part of the ‘Never Trump’ movement. I just think that given the kind of campaign that he’s running, I can’t support him.”

But Flake begs the question, why should the Republican Party support Republican senators who won’t support the presidential candidate chosen by its base?