Murkowski the moderate is portrayed as a political unicorn in long-form profile at Deseret News

32
Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Mary Peltola

“Life as a moderate at the highest levels of American politics can be simultaneously frenzied and monotonous,” writes Michael J. Mooney, a writer at Deseret News of Salt Lake City, in an extended political profile of Alaska’s Sen. Lisa Murowski.

Mooney interviewed liberal politicos and pollsters in Alaska to pull together his report, in which he shows that Alaska conservatives think poorly of Murkowski, who is Republican on paper., She survives with the support of Democrats and undeclared voters. One thing that binds her to her Democrat supporters is her hatred of Donald Trump.

Murkowski “regularly collaborates and socializes with colleagues across the political spectrum. But her most obvious defiance of party dogma has been her repeated criticism of Trump. She’s called him ‘spiteful’ and ‘flawed to his core.’ She said she wouldn’t vote for him in 2016 or 2020 and has already said she won’t vote for him in 2024. She was one of only seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict Trump during his 2021 impeachment trial, saying at the time that she’d seen ‘clear evidence that he attempted to overturn the 2020 election after losing it.’ And she’s the only one of those seven who’s faced voters since then,” Mooney writes.

Mooney quotes Alaska’s leading liberal pollster Ivan Moore as saying that among self-described Alaska conservatives, a mere 27% have a positive view of Murkowski, and 69% have a negative view. Among Alaska moderates, 55% have a positive view. Among progressives, the senator has a 72% positive rating, and only 21% see her negatively.

While Republicans typically don’t vote for her, she more than makes up for it with independents and Democrats, Mooney explains of the mystery of why Murkowski has been able to remain in office for 22 years.

“Moore told me she’s almost certainly the only Republican officeholder in the country who’s more popular among progressives than conservatives,” Mooney writes. “I asked Moore if Murkowski would have any chance of winning a Republican primary. ‘No, none,’ he said. ‘It’s categorically zero.'”

And then comes the kicker: Murkowski may switch parties, but not just yet.

Moore is also quoted as saying that Murkowski will not give up being a Republican while her father, former Senator and Governor Frank Murkowski is alive. “As long as Daddy’s still alive, she ain’t switching,” Moore is quoted as saying. “I think Daddy would be very disappointed.” Frank Murkowski is now 91 years old.

Lisa Murkowski would not grant an interview to Mooney for the profile, but he interviewed about 20 other people for his profile, which can be read at this link.

32 COMMENTS

  1. Sen Murkowski is very much a disappointment in the Alaska community. Sticking her finger in the air to see how the win blows is how she determines what she supports. That is not what is in the best interest of Alaskans. We need to find a strong candidate to defeat her when she’s up next. In the meantime we need to get rid of Ranked Choice Voting to help defeat her. VOTE YES on 2!

  2. Well, I’m not dying anytime soon. I get pensions from my terms as US Senator, and from Alaska as the governor. I still have lots of money from my days as a banker. And I used to eat all of my meals at Denny’s restaurants just so I could save money. You think I’m going to lay down and die just so Lisa can hurry up and join her friends over at the Democrat Party. Nope. I love living here in Wrangell. And I’ll spite Lisa and live another 15 years on Medicare just to keep her in the Republican Party when she turns 80.

    • Frankie, let’s just let her join the Democrats now. She waiting politely for us to croak so she can inherit with househusband. This is about our money. Let’s change the will to “disinheritance,” and give her share to the Alaska Republican Party now. At least we can be proud Republicans in the end and still get a good send off by party officials when our time comes.

      • I remember those family meals at Denny’s, Frankie. I always thought you were a bit cheap. Any chance you could put a small fund aside for me just in case I ever have to reopen my noodle stand? Lisa has been getting pretty tight these past few years.

      • Nancy, your comment will get you a free ticket back into the Republican women’s coffee clubs, but, most people believe that blood is thicker than water. Lisa has polarized our beautiful state. And she knows this. I doubt she wants to make you and Frank look like evil Republicans in your last remaining years. Credit her Catholic upbringing by you. However, most Alaskans will agree that the Murkowski legacy has been forever tarnished by your spiteful daughter.

  3. Lisa is classic, the impersonifaction of the Uniparty, which has dominated Alaska for decades. Don Young, Frank Murkowski and Uncle Ted were all Uniparty, receiving essential support from the Democrat Party operatives.

    Ted was a very personable and likeable person, and did not deserve the treatment he was taken out with. They are all involved in the incestuous corruption, the irony is the pretense of going after one of their own, like a vicious wolf pack.

    Juneau is controlled by the Uniparty, with massive underlying corruption. The combination creates a dysfunctional environment, unable to produce competent leadership.

    Alaska is not, and never has been a “conservative” state. Just selfish factions maneuvering to extract the largest share of the oil revenues and federal spending for themselves.

  4. There is nothing moderate about Murkowski. She votes with the left / far left with regularity and basks in the dark money the Dems provide to help her change the voting system here to keep her from losing.
    She’s as rank as the rank choice voting she helped push deceptively on the people of Alaska.

  5. Lisa is a coward at best and a traitor at worst.
    Wont switch till daddy is dead, coward. Show your father who you really are, we see you.
    And saw clear evidence against trump, bullshat.
    Lyin cowardly Lisa, i can only pray your father knows what a traitor you really are, no matter what you call yourself, we know you for the lying politician that you are.
    Traitor to Alaska, traitoe to America, liar to your own parents.

    • A coward? A traitor? I think not. She’s one of the few republicans who have the guts to stand up to the MAGA cancer that is destroying the party. She’s taken a lot of heat for not groveling before Trump like so many in the party. You may not like her, but she’s anything but a coward or traitor.

  6. Excellent article, Suzanne. It’s what we all believed about Lisa. She’s a true left-wing Democrat, still hiding behind her daddy and mommy.

  7. Murkowski knows her legacy is rooted in selling her soul as a pro-abortion senator with an indelible mark on her soul as a baptized Catholic.

    She won’t switch parties. She appeals to Catholics -including bishops and female chancery apparatchiks- who prefer not to take Christ seriously in Matthew 25:45-46:

    “Then the King will answer, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for Me.’

    And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous info eternal life.’”

    • Wrong! Deseret does not back Romney. The liberal Catholics and Protestants in SLC do. Long ago, Romney traded in his covered wagon and 16 wives for a governor’s seat in Massachusettes. Do you think the Catholics in Boston would support a Mormon? Think again, pal. Romney is the persona of carpet baggers. From MI to MA to UT. He’s been carpet bagging off his daddy’s name for 35 years. Just like Lisa.

  8. Murkowski needs to be caught cheating in the elections! We need whistleblowers to come out! There is no way that she has been winning honestly. So ready for her to be gone!

    • Scott Kendall is Lisa’s highly paid political bodyguard. He was also hired to protect Bill Walker, but that didn’t work out because Bill’s Lt Gov. got caught up in pedophilia.

  9. Should the Republicans in the Senate gain maybe four seats this election cycle, I could imagine a scenario in which Senator Murkowski is kicked out of the new majority, with loss of any chairmanships. That could be very sobering for her pork-hungry patrons here in Alaska.

    • The concept you mention is right on. The reality is a GOP controlled senate never negates what the Uniparty has previously accomplished to create a totalitarian state.

      The bribes have been paid and there is no clause to represent the average citizen.

      The GOP leadership prefers a razor thin minority status. This way the deciding vote to perpetuate Uniparty control can be negotiated for massive financial kickbacks.

      There is no difference between GOP and Lisa corruption. The senators just sing in different tenors to dupe their constituents, as needed.

      • I think we generally agree on the results but I might offer a different explanation on the process. The weak point for Republicans in both the Senate and the House are found in those that sit on the Appropriations Committees. Senator Murkowski is one of these folks. Without fail, whenever a serious attempt to constrain federal spending arises, the Republican appropriators cave in and kill spending restraint. In exchange for this – the “Uniparty” people hand out pork to the Republican appropriators. Senator Murkowski distributes these millions to those in Alaska that rely on it and they adore her. In recent years, the federal gravy train very rarely renders any benefit to the average Alaskan. The military will get new playhouses and toys, village X will get $20 million for a new community center, non-profit Y will get money for a project and various Native-related entities will get grants for bureaucracy and studies. If Senator Murkowski were to lose access to this pork, this world would collapse. And Alaska continues to stagnate.

        • This world of grants and various pork “funding” you accurately describe will collapse, maybe sooner than later, across the board, when our entire financial system collapses due to unsustainable debt.

          The tens of thousands of people who work in the Alaska/Federal government funded non productive economy will be essentially unemployable, not having the skills or experience to participate in useful fields.

          It will take a couple generations to recover, after the initial chaos.

  10. I remember the first election in which Lisa had to run, after being appointed. She had a debate with Tony Knowles, who ran for senator in his last, failed run for office. I listened to the whole thing on the radio. Tony just rambled on about any random subject for every question and didn’t actually answer any of them. Lisa completely wrecked Knowles, repeatedly citing bills by number and answering questions directly and thoroughly . She was unquestionably conservative. What happened to her between then and now, I’m still trying to figure out.

  11. I heard a speaker who supported candidates based on the policies they put forth. Not personality. Not looks. Not whether they swear or not. Policy lasts a long time after the leaders change. Quickly go online and watch or listen to Pastor Gary Hamrick 13.29 ‘https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAAWC_UROoA “Unite for the Soul of America.”

Comments are closed.