After losing to Joe Miller in the 2010 primary, Sen. Lisa Murkowski bucked the Republican establishment by mounting a historic write-in campaign. She justified her action by saying Alaskans \u201ccannot accept the extremist views of Joe Miller and equally, we can\u2019t accept the inexperience of Mr. (Scott) McAdams\u201d, the Democrat\u2019s nominee. This year she should be using those two adjectives to describe one candidate she\u2019s refusing to accept \u2014 Donald Trump for President.<\/p>\n
Back in 2010, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) expected Murkowski to accept her primary defeat without a whimper. They planned to support Miller in the general election and pledged $200,000 toward his campaign. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf Senator Murkowski is truly committed to doing what is right for her state,\u201d the NRSC said in an official statement, \u201cthen we hope that she will step forward and fully endorse Joe Miller\u2019s candidacy.\u201d <\/p>\n
After Murkowski formerly announced her write-in campaign, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., then the minority leader, and his lieutenants stripped her of her senate leadership role within the party. And state GOP officials worried McAdams would win if Murkowski and Miller split the conservative vote.<\/p>\n
No one in the party establishment supported Murkowski\u2019s write-in bid for reelection. And why would they? She was running against one of their own. In their party\u2013before\u2013the\u2013people view, she was violating what Ronald Reagan referred to as the eleventh commandment. \u201cYou should speak no ill of another Republican.\u201d<\/p>\n
Donald Trump could care less about that. He publicly insulted every one of his opponents during the party\u2019s nominating process and ridicules any other Republican who challenges him. He\u2019s also refused to reciprocate the official endorsements he received from House Speaker Paul Ryan and Arizona Sen. John McCain. <\/p>\n
Murkowski hasn\u2019t offered any enthusiastic support for Trump. All she\u2019s said is she\u2019s always supported her party\u2019s presidential nominee. She didn\u2019t even attend the GOP\u2019s national convention, although she claims she had to be in Alaska campaigning for this month\u2019s primary.<\/p>\n
Trump probably knows very little about Alaska politics. Otherwise he\u2019d recognize that Murkowski\u2019s excuse for missing his convention was lame. All anyone has to do is look at the campaign websites of her opponents to realize she has no serious competition this year. <\/p>\n
Unlike 2010, Murkowski has no debates listed on her campaign\u2019s schedule of events. Back then she debated Miller three times, including one sponsored by the Kenai\/Soldotna Chamber of Commerce. This year she skipped the Chamber\u2019s candidate forum even though one of her primary challengers was there. <\/p>\n
Simply stated, Murkowski\u2019s decision to campaign here before the primary was a charade that let her avoid the appearance of directly endorsing Trump. She\u2019s only backing him \u201cto stick by the process,\u201d which means \u201cstanding by the party nominee.\u201d That\u2019s how she explained the NRSC\u2019s support for Miller in 2010 while adding that \u201cthey may not be doing it gladly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why can\u2019t Murkowski be like Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who made it clear to voters he\u2019s not endorsing Trump? Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-South Carolina, and Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., are two other Republican who aren\u2019t afraid to say they don\u2019t support Trump. And there\u2019s several others in the House who aren\u2019t backing him.<\/p>\n
But then again, these honest souls are a small minority in their party. The rest are united in keeping Hillary Clinton out of the White House. And Trump expects to play that to his advantage. <\/p>\n
\u201cEven if people don\u2019t like me, they have to vote for me,\u201d Trump said Tuesday. \u201cThey have no choice.\u201d <\/p>\n
That\u2019s because Clinton is more than the Democratic party\u2019s presidential nominee for 2016. Party leaders and conservative pundits have been warning against a Clinton presidency since 2007. And she\u2019s been despised by most Republican voters since she was First Lady. That\u2019s why GOP members of congress are stuck riding the \u201chate Hillary\u201d bandwagon. <\/p>\n
But there\u2019s something else defeating Clinton offers the GOP leadership. It\u2019s a chance to end a pattern of broken promises. Since 2010 they\u2019ve failed to repeal Obamacare and couldn\u2019t prevent the legalization of same sex marriage. Going back further, their balanced budget initiative has been nothing but talk since Bill Clinton left the White House. Roe Vs. Wade is still the law of the land. And the Department of Education is still up and running. <\/p>\n
Murkowski\u2019s dilemma is simple. Secretly she probably hopes Trump loses. But if he does, she doesn\u2019t want Republican voters blaming her for helping send Clinton into the White House. Because the outfall from that failure may be an angry mob that\u2019ll make the Tea Party revolt of 2010 look like a family social gathering. <\/p>\n
\u2022 Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After losing to Joe Miller in the 2010 primary, Sen. Lisa Murkowski bucked the Republican establishment by mounting a historic write-in campaign. She justified her action by saying Alaskans \u201ccannot accept the extremist views of Joe Miller and equally, we can\u2019t accept the inexperience of Mr. (Scott) McAdams\u201d, the Democrat\u2019s nominee. This year she should […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":8,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-10102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10102"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=10102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}