Miller Challenges Murkowski’s “Good Faith” on ObamaCare

US Senate Candidate Joe Miller is calling on Senator Lisa Murkowski to explain why she continues to grandstand on the repeal of ObamaCare, while offering us no concrete evidence that she will stand up and be counted in the United States Senate. Early this month, The Hill reported that she has declined to sign a simple nine-word Republican bill that would repeal ObamaCare and allow free market advocates to go back and get it right. Senators Jon Kyl of Arizona and John Cornyn of Texas, among other prominent Republican legislators have signed on, while Mitch McConnell, Lamar Alexander and Lisa Murkowski have begged off. (See Senate Bill to Repeal Healthcare Reform Lacks Backing from Republican Leaders, The Hill, July 5, 2010.)

“The Senator has some explaining to do,” Miller said. “Alaskan voters deserve something more than a ‘duck and weave’ routine on her nuanced, and sometimes contradictory positions on the repeal of ObamaCare. If she cannot make up her mind on something this straightforward and unpopular, how can Republican voters have any reasonable expectation that she will ‘fight for Alaska’ if they give her the nod in August.” Last August speaking at a townhall meeting in Anchorage, she said “It’s not so much that the government run [healthcare] plan is in and of itself a bad thing.” She backed up that view with a vote earlier in 2009. Murkowski was one of only a handful of Republican Senators who voted against their Party with the Democrats for a $33 billion expansion of the SCHIP program, shortly after President Obama took office (The Senate Vote on H.R. 2 as Amended, January 29, 2009). President George W. Bush vetoed a similar measure twice on the grounds that it was a move towards socialized medicine which the nation could ill-afford.

Though she now says she favors repealing ObamaCare, as has been widely reported, she said precisely the opposite in a March 30 interview with KTUU shortly after the bill passed. At the time, it looked like public sympathy was swinging in support of the new legislation. But after Mr. Miller decided to jump into the race in April, she altered her message. Do her recent protests really indicate a change in course? The new information from The Hill raises serious questions about her willingness to stand on the true conservative principle of limited government, and the disparity between what the Senator says in Alaska and what she does in Washington. It seems we’re hearing more of the reelection Lisa now, while the real Murkowski sees new federal government programs as the answer to almost every problem.