Flake on Running Against Trump: ‘Better Candidates out There’ than Me, But ‘Somebody Needs To’

TAPPER: ... for the first time in 30 years.

If you look at the exit polls, Republicans in Arizona lost ground among Latinos, among male voters, among college graduates, and among suburban voters, compared to President Trump's 2016 performance. 

Do you think Arizona is winnable for a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020? 

FLAKE: Oh, it certainly is. I think we will see the same trends that we have seen elsewhere.

Arizona is still nominally a Republican state. We have a voter registration advantage of, I believe, still about 200,000 statewide. But you cannot run as someone who is just tied at the hip with the president and win statewide. Voters in Arizona are rejecting that.

And I think that we're seeing that elsewhere in the country as well. We're losing the suburbs. If we had a mass movement from the suburbs for people to move back to rural areas, then perhaps our Republican Party would have more of a future, but not the way that we're going now. 

So I'm very concerned about where -- where we are in Arizona and elsewhere in the country. TAPPER: Let's talk about the Republican Party's future. 

I have to ask because you made a joke at a -- at a dinner here in Washington earlier this week about -- about a future election in New Hampshire and yourself. I don't want to go into the joke, but you alluded yourself to potentially you running for president. And you have made no secret that you're considering running against President Trump. 

When are you going to decide? When are you going to tell us in the media and the world what you're going to do? 

FLAKE: Well, I have said all along that somebody needs to run on the Republican side, if nothing else, to remind Republicans what it means to be conservative, what being a conservative really means, and what it means to be decent as well. 

I think that the future of the party is with people with an optimistic vision moving ahead. I don't think that will be me. I think there are better candidates out there. But somebody needs to run.

TAPPER: Who would you like to see run? Ben Sasse?

FLAKE: Well, there are names out there. I would love to see Ben Sasse. I'm not speaking for him. Obviously, I would love to see Ben run. John Kasich has put some things in motion.

I think there will be somebody. There needs to be somebody. And I have been to New Hampshire a few times. It's a great place to be in the fall. Not sure about the wintertime, but, anyway, somebody needs to run. Somebody needs to run.

TAPPER: It's cold in the wintertime. I will tell you that, as somebody who went to college there.

(LAUGHTER)

FLAKE: Yes, it is.