Joe Miller meets with Alaska conservatives to plot course ahead
Announcements for Saturday afternoon’s “Celebrate America” rally at Kenai’s Leif Hansen Memorial Park did, indeed, specify 2012, though much of the proceedings would have been right at home in the 2010 election season, or even the 2008 presidential campaign.
Among the attendees were supporters of Texas Congressman and current presidential candidate Ron Paul, who also ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 against Sen. John McCain. Standing at the park’s frontage with the Kenai Spur Highway was another reference to the 2008 presidential election — a man bearing a homemade cardboard sign that read, “Where’s the real birth certificate?” and, “Obama is a fraud,” with a Washington, D.C., phone number for Rep. Don Young.
Presenters spoke of continuing the ongoing effort to return Alaska and the U.S. to the values of conservatism, rather than setting out any brand-new mission. The special guest speaker, Joe Miller, reiterated the message he’s been delivering since his 2010 campaign for U.S. Senate, in which he won the primary vote but lost in the general election to a write-in campaign for incumbent Lisa Murkowski.
The message bears repeating because the state and country are still facing the same problems, Miller said. “This nation still is at a crossroad point, similar to what we saw in 2010,” he said. “… We’ve got to have people who are willing to tell the truth, and we aren’t seeing that at the national level. And even at the state level, the same sort of situation approaches — decreasing oil production and increasing expenditures.” Miller warned that the practice of “kicking the debt can down the road,” on both the national and state level, is not sustainable. Sometime in the near future, spending will need to be ratcheted back and tough decisions will have to be made, he said. “It’s easy for the free money. That’s why politicians like it, because it’s the lazy approach. And that’s what we’ve dealt with for years and we’ve got to move to a different direction or else we’re going to end up with hard times,” Miller said.
In Alaska, he advocates for diversifying the economy as a way to soften the tough transition the state faces as both oil revenues and federal spending decline. “It’s obvious that this state needs to be active and very concerned about ensuring that we create an economy outside of those traditional sources,” he said. “… This state has got to be real about creating an economy, or we’re going to have a mass exodus of people going on. We’re not going to have jobs for our kids . . . ”
Read more from the Redoubt Reporter/Homer Tribune.
