Sen. Murkowski has never seen such vitriol in politics

TAKE A LONG LOOK AT WHERE IT’S COMING FROM…

Sen. Lisa Murkowski recalled the words of the late Sen. John McCain:

“Remember, the darkest hour is just before … it goes pitch black.”

Alaska’s senior senator is in a funk, she said, as she described how she feels worn out by the intense partisanship in Congress. She spoke these “dark” thoughts to the Alaska Legislature on Tuesday, during her annual legislative address.

While most of her speech focused on Alaska-related policy — violence against Native women, natural resources, and other familiar topics — the beginning of her talk was about how bad things are in Washington, D.C.

The impeachment trial was “perhaps the darkest most deeply partisan experience of my career.” It started out as a partisan exercise in the House, and continued that way into the Senate, and it threatened to drag the Judicial Branch of government down with it, which is why she voted against conviction of Trump, Murkowski said.

Murkowski quoted Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers: “Yet it ought not to be forgotten that the demon of faction will, at certain seasons, extend his sceptre over all numerous bodies of men.”

“We are in the season that our founder warned us about,” Murkowski said.

Our founders didn’t warn us of a national epidemic of unhinged behavioral disorders occurring during the greatest period of wealth and success for most Americans, and perhaps the greatest time of prosperity in the history of the world.

The Democrats have lurched so far left, that they are far past partisan election politics, and are neck-deep in culture wars driven by a self-loathing for all things American:

• Last month in in Bladen County, North Carolina, a local Democrat official threatened to call police if someone recited the Pledge of Allegiance at their next Board of Elections meeting.

• Under President Barack Obama, a flag celebrating people’s sex lives was raised over U.S. embassies. Under President Trump, embassy officials refused a direct order to not fly the rainbow flag.

• A San Francisco school board spent $600,000 to paint over an historic New Deal-era mural of George Washington because a portion of it showed his life as a slave-owner.

• Students across college campuses are demanding the removal of statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

• An Alabama Democrat has proposed mandatory vasectomies for men over the age of 50.

• Democrats are trying to force Christian bakers to bake cakes celebrating gay weddings, even though that violates the bakers’ religious beliefs.

• Nike pulled its line of Air Max 1 USA sneakers after a complaint from former NFL player Colin Kaepernick, who said the Betsy Ross flag is a symbol of racism.

• Former presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke was forced to apologize for “white privilege.”

• Pete Buttigieg—who would be the first openly gay president—was questioned by the liberal media because he is too white: “Is Pete Buttigieg just another white male candidate, or does his gayness count as diversity?” wrote Slate online.

• Bernie Sanders said there’s no room in the Democrat Party for pro-life Democrats: “I think being pro-choice is an absolutely essential part of being a Democrat. By this time in history . . . when we talk about what a Democrat is, I think being pro-choice is an essential part of that,” he added.

• Buttigieg was not to be outdone: “My point is that it shouldn’t be up to the government official to draw the line. It should be up the woman who is confronted with that choice.” No matter when in her pregnancy she decides to end it.

• Joe Biden equated gender identity with racial minorities, declaring: “Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time. There is no room for compromise when it comes to basic human rights.” Some African-Americans have raised an eyebrow to that statement.

• College campuses have become dangerous places for conservatives, with violent incidents being reported weekly, this one being representative:

• This week the Democrat mayor of Los Angeles declared his city’s police department will not cooperate with immigration officials.

• In the House and Senate, Democrat women have become practically cultish, with women lawmakers dressing in matching white, as though they are scolding overseers, whenever the president speaks to Congress.

• Democrats tried for two years to stick a Russian conspiracy story to President Trump, and when that failed, turned to the Ukraine story. And when polling showed that Trump was going to be tough to beat, they pulled the trigger on impeachment as a desperate play.

• A Republican-run voter registration tent in Florida was rammed by an angry anti-Trump driver who missed hitting volunteers by six inches.

• Progressives are trying to tell us that gender is a choice, and that the proper pronoun is not the singular he or she, but “they.” And that it’s fine for men to compete as women in sports, so long as they’ve taken medication to suppress their testosterone.

The list goes on.

Murkowski is right — our times are partisan, more than they have been in generations.

But it’s not Republicans who have suddenly become more hardline. Republicans have basically stayed within range of where the party has been in the policy arena for the past 20 years — protection of the unborn, promoting legal immigration, a strong national defense, and not making government the answer to every human problem. Republicans have just been fighting back, finally.

But today’s Democrat party would be unrecognizable to President John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, or even Bill Clinton. It’s a party that has been swarmed an entitled breed of radical socialists braying insults at American values and attempting to weaken the nation’s national defense. The Left has launched an all-out Culture War, and Murkowski is witnessing the effects of the full assault on America in the halls of Congress.

In the words of President Ronald Reagan, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

These are dark times. Which is why Americans must send warriors to Washington, D.C., ones who understand the battle, what’s at stake, and are willing to fight.