Washington Times: Mitch McConnell should butt out of Alaska’s intraparty senate race

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WASHINGTON TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD

“Alaska Republicans should resent Mr. McConnell’s gratuitous interference in the race and the way Ms. Murkowski has manipulated this ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ game. They should vote for Ms. Tshibaka on Nov. 8, and definitely not vote for Ms. Murkowski as their ‘second choice,’ which would only help rescue an out-of-step incumbent.”

Defeated in the 2010 Alaska GOP primary by a conservative challenger, liberal Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski defied the odds and ran a successful write-in campaign for reelection.

Ms. Murkowski — who had been appointed to the seat in 2002 by her father, then-Gov. Frank Murkowski, in a move that gave nepotism a bad name — won that 2010 race with just 39.5% of the vote in a three-way race. That was the lowest share of the vote for a winning Senate candidate in 40 years.

Fast-forward to today. Ms. Murkowski is again running for reelection and is even less popular now with the GOP base than she was in 2010.

That shouldn’t surprise anyone after Ms. Murkowski voted against conservative Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 2018, but then turned around and voted in favor of liberal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination earlier this year, or after she voted to convict President Donald J. Trump, a fellow Republican, of baseless, Democratic-driven charges of incitement to insurrection in his second impeachment trial. (After the impeachment vote, Ms. Murkowski was censured by the Alaska Republican Party.)

If all that weren’t bad enough, according to FiveThirtyEight.com, which tracks congressional votes, Ms. Murkowski voted with Mr. Trump’s positions just 73% of the time, second-lowest only to her fellow liberal Republican, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. In the first nine months of the Biden administration, however, Ms. Murkowski voted with the positions of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, nearly 79% of the time.

No doubt fearing another primary challenge (and the unlikely prospect of successfully pulling off another write-in campaign), Ms. Murkowski and her allies in 2020 orchestrated a change to Alaska’s election laws.

Read the rest of this editorial at The Washington Times.

23 COMMENTS

  1. Good for the Washington Times. Whenever I begin to despair of our senior senator, along comes a prominent and outspoken person (or editors) who rebukes her. In the gentlest possible voice I also rebuke her. You are well past your expiration date in public service, senator, and if you will not retire, then be defeated.

  2. So its ok for Trump to attack Senator Murkowski, and fly up here to hold a rally for Palin and Kelly, but it’s not ok for McConnell to support Senator Murkowski and attack Kelly? Alaskans will make their own decision about who to vote for. I don’t care what either McConnell or the orange dye-job cult leader think or say.

    But I am grateful that McConnell has shed a light on the fact that a government investigation concluded that Kelly had submitted false time sheets when she was a federal employee, and received tens of thousands of dollars for work she didn’t do. She claims she was exonerated from those charges, but has not shown any evidence that she was. I guess that makes her kinda like Herschel Walker. He claims he never paid his girlfriend to murder his unborn child despite overwhelming evidence that he did. He also abandoned four children he fathered with different women, and refused to support them or their mothers. And yet the Republican Party still stands by him, defends him, and supports his candidacy. I guess you can do just about anything if you are a Republican candidate running for the Senate, and the Republican Party will stick with you. This is the result of the destruction of the Republican Party by Trump and his Maga followers. It’s so sad to see this happening,

    • Rick it’s clear you didn’t read the story and that you only are reading the propaganda on Kelly, which is patently false, but at least try to comprehend — reading comprehension required — that Trump came up in support of the Republican-endorsed candidate and McConnell is working against the Republican endorsed candidate. As for orange dye, that pretty much shows you are not interested in the truth but you’re just spewing. Go back to the ADN, from whence you came.

      • Here’s a new flash for you Bullwinkle. Mitch McConnell and Lisa Murkowski are also republicans and they have as much right to campaign and play politics as Kelly and the wanna-be dictator criminal whose jumpsuit will soon match his bad hair dye. Kelly was not exonerated. The letter she produced today simply says the matter was closed, with no further action taken. If you do a little online searching you will find links to the report that details the findings of what she did and recommends that she be referred for prosecution. But this is all irrelevant. Polls show Lisa will comfortably crush Kelly in November and soon after that kelly will slink back to Washington to resume her life in the swamp from which she came. The bonus will be that her husband will leave with her and perhaps then Anchorage can hire an HR director who actually performs vetting and background checks before hiring high level municipal employees to confirm they possess the qualifications listed on their resumes.

    • You really gotta try harder. This is all too easy

      -Trump is living rent free in your head. Probably always will.
      -Kelly was exonerated.
      -Hershel has openly admitted to having made bad decisions and sought treatment for mental health issues.

      Considering the long illustrious history of moral malfeasance by Democrats, making claims of outrage over impiety is somewhere between laughable and pathetic.

      But you do you, boo.

    • “…but it’s not ok for McConnell to support Senator Murkowski and attack Kelly?”
      Correct.
      .
      President Trump is no longer in office. McConnell is. If the Republicans win a majority in the Senate, McConnell is practically assured of being Senate Majority Leader. Which means if Kelly T. gets elected, he will now have to work with a member of his own party that he campaigned against.
      .
      Now… if he endorsed Murkowski, that is one thing, and no one would have a problem with it, but he is sending a massive amount of funds to AK to stop a fellow republican from getting elected. Attacking a candidate that you might have to work with is at best dirty politics. It taints the relationship from that start.
      .

      • That’s a good point. But Trump started the ball rolling when he viciously attacked members of his own party, including Senator Murkowski and Senator McConnell. He did that when he was President, even though he needed to work with them and count on them to support his agenda. He started a civil war within the Republican Party, between his cult-like MAGA heads and the rest of us. So I don’t think it’s fair to criticize those Republicans who are on the other side of the battle from fighting back. I also don’t think one should put party loyalty over loyalty to our country or to following the law and being ethical. Which is why I will vote for Senator Murkowski.

        • Trump is not running for any office, nor does he currently hold an office. Former President Trump, does not have to work with the Senator that wins the AK election in November. Nor is his PAC funding attack ads. Knocking the performance of a fellow party member, even if it is insulting, is a far cry from paying for attack ads.
          .
          And, “Trump hit me first” is a pretty childish excuse.
          .
          Let me be clear here. An endorsement is perfectly OK.
          Funding ads attacking a member of your own party, who you have a high chance of having in your Senate caucus, is not.
          .
          Finally, you vote for who you want to vote for, for your own reasons. It is not my place to tell you not to.
          But… I do not like Trump? That is a pretty weak reason to vote for Murkowski. If it pushes you over a threshold, no problem. Run with it. But, realize it is weak.

          • No, it’s not weak, it is necessary. Trump is a criminal and a wannabe dictator. His followers are a cult of MAGA heads who excuse, ignore, and explain away his continual lies, crimes, racism, and anti-democratic actions. That is what cult members do.

            Kelly Tshibaka is in Trump’s camp in the civil war consuming the Republican Party today. If she wins, she will do what he tells her to. She is unfit to lead and I am happy that McConnell has exposed the investigation that concluded she defrauded the government with fake time sheets and referred her to the USDOJ to consider prosecuting her.

            Just as the leaders of the MAGA cult have strived to convince their followers to look the other way and ignore the actions of Trump and Herschell Walker, they are now working overtime to convince you to excuse Tshibaka by claiming that she was exonerated from these charges, which is not true. They are also trying to shift the focus to attacking McConnell, rather than questioning the integrity of Tshibaka. Most of the comments on this blog suggest that they are succeeding, at least among the MAGA cult members.

        • Sorry Rick.
          Did not realize how strong your TDS is.
          .
          I recommend you hang around with Lucinda and Bill Y. a bit more often. They will blindly agree with you.
          You are not going to convince anyone else.

          • It’s clear CBMTTek that you are a member of the MAGA cult. Like all cult members, you are in denial of the facts about your cult and its leader, and believe anyone who tells you the truth about your cult and its leaders are lying. In your case, you automatically label people who speak the truth about Trump as suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome,

            You didn’t come up with that label yourself. It’s what you were told to think and say by your cult leaders. They want you to keep contributing money to their fraudulent schemes and to their political campaigns. You are just another MAGA sheep who they want to sheer occasionally. For example, Trump raised over a hundred million dollars from his followers to prove the 2020 election was stolen and to overturn the election results, but has spent almost none of that money. Steve Bannon was convicted of fleecing conservatives who sent his group money to help build a border wall. Trump and Bannon are just fraudulent grifters who are getting rich from their MAGA cult followers.

            It’s not too late to get help CBMTTek. You could start by getting your news from multiple sources, including some that aren’t part of the conservative media. Or maybe try watching the testimony presented by the January 6 committee, and evaluate it in your own mind, rather than just parroting what right wing commentators tell you about it.

        • Ahhh… yes, Rick. I was told to do and say things.
          .
          No, I was not.
          .
          Now, here is the difference between the left and free thinking people. The left follows herd think. Their view of the world is a top down view, where “leaders” tell people what to do, and how to act.
          On the other hand, free people see the world as bottom up, where we tell our leaders what to do, and how to act, and when those leaders do not do what their followers want, they are replaced.
          .
          No one told me that America should be the greatest country in the world. I want America to be great. No one had to tell me that Obama’s put other country’s interests first attitude, and his apology tour was like rooting for the ’77 Mets. I did not need guidance from “leadership” to know that hiring on Cabinet members based on what they are, instead of what they do, is a bad idea, and will harm the country.
          .
          Perhaps you need to look to your leadership for a dose of reality here Rick.
          .
          Tell me, what did you hate about Trump the most? The thriving economy? Energy independence? Selling rice to China? Seeing armed conflicts around the world deescalate or even stop? Perhaps it was US companies moving manufacturing back to the US? Or maybe it was how illegal drugs stopped flowing unimpeded across the southern border?
          .
          I will give you a few days to check in with your leaders and get your answer.

    • Why would anyone in Alaska care what the radically ‘woke’, staunchly pro-establishment, pro-globalist, pro-warmongering Washington (Com)Post opines about, either?
      .
      But yet the pathetic rump of the Anchorage Daily Worker, er, “News”, is today little more than the Washington (Com)Post, Anchorage edition.

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