U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, spoke with two groups in Juneau on Thursday. Neither were town hall meetings requested by progressive constituents in Juneau. On the other hand, the two Sen. Dan Sullivan held in Fairbanks and Anchorage didn\u2019t help our cause. Instead, by following a Tea Party-like script, activists at those only satisfied their own cathartic needs.<\/p>\n
Murkowski\u2019s first appearance was at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon. That was an easy booking to her calendar since it pretty much guaranteed her a very friendly audience.<\/p>\n
Agreeing to meet the \u201cThe ReSISTERS, Juneau\u201d was different. It displayed a willingness to hear progressive\u2019s concerns about health care and environmental protection. The women in that group began their conversation with Murkowski with an open letter that the Empire published in February. Written in a respectful tone, it led to a meeting one of the women described to me as \u201ccourteous and quite amicable.\u201d And she found Murkowski to be \u201ca good listener who responds to her audience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Courteousness wasn\u2019t part of either of Sullivan\u2019s town halls. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner described the meeting there as a \u201craucous barrage of boos that threatened to tip the meeting into the open hostility.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Alaska Dispatch Columnist Paul Jenkins referred to progressives at the Anchorage meeting as \u201cuseful idiots\u201d who took their script from Indivisible\u2019s \u201cPractical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda.\u201d He concluded that the textbook ruckus they created was proof the entire left acts like a 5-year-old \u201cwith totalitarian tendencies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although I doubt any progressives care what Jenkins thinks of them, there\u2019s little benefit to, in David Frum\u2019s words, empowering \u201cthe targets of their outrage.\u201d The target being Trump and his defenders. We \u201cmay be up against something never before seen in American life\u201d the former Bush speechwriter wrote in the Atlantic magazine last February. And that\u2019s \u201ca president and an administration determined to seize on unrest to legitimate repression.\u201d It\u2019s exactly why the rudeness at town halls may be counterproductive.<\/p>\n
Indivisible\u2019s Guide was developed by former progressive congressional staffers. They pirated the Tea Party\u2019s game plan from 2010 because it was successful in blocking President Obama\u2019s agenda by winning back the House and electing senators like Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) and Marco Rubio (R-Florida).<\/p>\n
\u201cBe polite but persistent, and demand real answers\u201d the Guide states. But if you don\u2019t agree with your representative\u2019s responses, it advises group members around the room to dispense with the politeness and start booing just like Tea Party members did seven years ago.<\/p>\n
Beyond contradictions like that, the Guide is a poor fit for Alaska\u2019s political landscape. Its authors believe members of Congress think about \u201creelection, reelection, reelection\u201d more than anything else. That doesn\u2019t matter to our senators now because they aren\u2019t up for reelection anytime soon. And our state isn\u2019t remotely similar to the swing districts down south in which the Tea Party helped Republicans flip control of the House.<\/p>\n
And seriously, that\u2019s the limit to the Tea Party\u2019s success. Putting Republicans in charge hasn\u2019t translated into actionable legislation. Instead, they\u2019ve given us an impotent government that\u2019s little more than a mirror of the extreme polarization in our society.<\/p>\n
That won\u2019t get any better by following Indivisible\u2019s game plan. Even if it does help Democrats take over Congress in 2018 and gain all the cards in 2020, they\u2019ll be stymied by a retrenchment of the right. It\u2019s a prescription for prolonging a vicious cycle. To think differently is to believe we\u2019re immune from the false promise of self-declared exceptionalism.<\/p>\n
I recognize the goal right now is resisting Trump\u2019s agenda, including plans to gut the Affordable Care Act, roll back environmental relegations, and ignore the science of climate change. But before embracing Indivisible\u2019s methods, consider Frum\u2019s advice.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want to scare Trump\u201d he asks us. \u201cBe orderly, polite, and visibly patriotic.\u201d That communication method may appear soft, but he suggests it\u2019s the radical opposite to being motivated by anger or desperation.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how the respectful communication initiated by ReSISTERS succeeded. While other groups are being dismissed as unruly fools, they got the attention of a powerful Republican Senator. And by genuinely listening to them, Murkowski is sending Trump a message that he\u2019s on shaky ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, spoke with two groups in Juneau on Thursday. Neither were town hall meetings requested by progressive constituents in Juneau. On the other hand, the two Sen. Dan Sullivan held in Fairbanks and Anchorage didn\u2019t help our cause. Instead, by following a Tea Party-like script, activists at those only satisfied their […]<\/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-5117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5117","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=5117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5117"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=5117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}