Murkowski, the Blame Game, and GOP Irrelevance
It’s hard to believe we are now two years removed from the historic 2010 election in which our senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, won a disputed write-in victory with one of the most vicious and underhanded campaigns of the modern era. I’m quite sure it would have made David Axelrod blush, that is, if he wasn’t involved.
That Murkowski triumphed in such a brazenly dishonest and cynical way is still shocking to my sensibilities, though I must confess that I always have been guilty of putting too much faith in my fellow man.
If that wasn’t bad enough, what came next should outrage every liberty-loving American and self-respecting Republican. Murkowski returned to Washington defiant and un-chastened, only to side with the defeated and discredited Barack Obama on every major piece of his lame duck agenda: ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ allowed gays to serve openly in the military for the first time in American history (over the objections of an overwhelming majority of service men and women in the field); The Dream Act would have allowed millions of illegal aliens to be granted amnesty, providing ‘anchors’ for millions more; The START Treaty unilaterally disarmed American weapons in the face of a growing nuclear threat the world over; and the tax compromise that struck down a permanent extension of the Bush era tax cuts. Fiscal cliff, anyone?
Murkowski was the only Republican to vote for all four pieces of legislation. But she didn’t stop there. She continued her ‘war on the Republican party’ by obstructing efforts to cut federal spending. Planned Parenthood funding was apparently an indispensable government expenditure, and was NPR, etc. Paul Ryan’s budget was too extreme. Tea Partiers were out-of-touch absolutists. The Republican Party was engaged in a ‘war on women.’ Radical activist judges could not be opposed. And the debt ceiling negotiations had to be given over to the appropriators. Just let the President pretty much spend as much as he wants. Yep, that’s our senior senator.
In siding with Barack Obama, Murkowski offered bipartisan legitimacy to a president who was essentially down for the count. Had he plowed forward to pass his agenda without some Republican support, it would have only dug him in deeper. But Lisa Murkowski is for nothing, if not for a hand out. So she offered her hand to Obama and helped him back onto his feet.
For almost two weeks now, conservatives have sat by and listened as luminaries from the Republican establishment have bloviated about how tea party insophisticates, social conservative morons, and Ron Paul libertarians are to blame for the epic failure of their golden boy, one Willard ‘Mitt’ Romney.
The Anchorage airwaves have been filled with talk of ‘adult conversations’ that must take place with the above mentioned villains, replete with sneers and bony fingers pointing in every direction, except in the mirror. Fact is, Anchorage talk radio is populated almost exclusively with Murkowski supporters. And for the record, not one has offered to sit down and have that ‘adult conversation’ since election night.
Just last week, a Murkowski groupie pontificated in the Anchorage Daily News about those embarrassing social conservatives and their outdated obscurantism. She even suggested that they (we) should be kicked to the curb for a new, and presumably more enlightened, center-left alliance. The all-new ‘Murkowski Republican Party'(good luck with that).
Just when I thought we were starting to move past the blame game, imagine my astonishment last night to stumble unto yet another missive in the mainstream press about the ‘civil war’ raging inside the Republican Party. I expect that coming from the likes of Rove, Jesmer, Schmidt, and their ilk.
But this time it wasn’t the supercilious Karl Rove, or the ubiquitous hung-over punditry inside the beltway still tipsy from months of hitting on the Romney Kool-Aid. It was none other than the nameless, faceless eunuchs inside the United States Senate who wished to be identified only as ‘Republican Senators.’ Sounds officious, doesn’t it? (If you’re going to wage war on us, at least come out of the shadows and show your face.)
Their agenda: ‘Read my lips; no more Todd Akins!’
The hubris of such a statement hardly even needs commentary. Yet it betrays their utter lack of even a nodding acquaintance with reality. The folks they so despise are, none other than the very ones who offered them the trust of elective office, only to be kicked to the curb when folly had run its full course.