“I have always supported the Republican nominee for president.” That’s the best Sen. Lisa Murkowski can do in terms of an endorsement for Donald Trump, her party’s presumptive nominee.
It’s a cautious statement that may mean nothing when she steps behind the polling curtain to cast her vote in November. Until then, while she ponders her real choices, I hope she’ll recall a time when party disloyalty on both sides helped secure her re-election.
It’s not news that Trump has the nomination locked up. Now that his last two opponents have dropped out of the race, the discussion has become about unifying the party behind him. That won’t be easy. And it shouldn’t be.
Like Murkowski, Rep. Don Young has never shown any enthusiasm for Trump. After Jeb Bush went limping back to Florida, the 22-term Congressman unofficially endorsed Ohio Gov. John Kasich as “the smartest one of the bunch.” But now that it’s just Trump left, Young is only willing to express his support in the “anything but Hillary Clinton” context. Here’s how he addressed the prospect of her following Barack Obama into the White House: “I believe this nation is being led down a terrible path by those focused on top down policies and ‘Washington, D.C. knows best’ solutions, all of which take away individual freedom and liberty.”
Well, in a flattering analysis of Trump’s business dealings, a national sales and marketing group known as IPA Family described his management style as centralized and autocratic. And conservative columnist Roland Poirier Martinsson claims that the business successes Trump brags about “reveals a demonstrably left-wing view of the nature of politics.”
If they’re right, then a Trump presidency will be exactly what Young claims he opposes.
Besides, party loyalty also comes loaded with demands from the same distant corner of the country. And it undermines the freedom to vote with our conscience.
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker isn’t giving up that freedom. Despite being the highest elected Republican in his state, he’s gone on the record stating he’ll vote for neither Trump nor Clinton.
The past chairwoman of the Massachusetts GOP won’t support Trump either. “I think that he’s going to be dangerous” said Jennifer Nassour, who is also the founder of Conservative Women for a Better Future. “I think that the best case scenario is that he just damages the Republican Party.”
Both are definitely bucking the so-called “will of the people” in Massachusetts, where Trump won a decisive primary victory. While racking up just under 50 percent of the vote, he finished 32 points ahead of his nearest competitor.
But no one can be sure what Alaskans want. More than 80 percent of the state’s registered Republicans didn’t cast ballots in the party’s Presidential Preference Poll held on the same day as the Massachusetts primary. And against the same slate of candidates, Trump came in a very close second in Alaska with just a third of the vote.
The “will of the people” is an especially lousy justification for Murkowski. Back in 2010, she ignored the voters’ choice in the GOP primary. After losing to Joe Miller by a small margin, and in defiance of state and national party leaders, she mounted a write-in campaign as an Independent.
Her decision to oppose the party’s nominee was influenced, in part, by Republicans who believed Miller’s views were to the extreme right. But she needed more than their support to beat him in the general election. Polls indicate she received the votes from as much as 30 percent of the state’s registered Democrats.
She also had help from Lt. Gov. Byron Malott. Although he ran for governor as a Democrat two years ago before teaming up with Bill Walker, he was unaffiliated with any party when he served as a co-chairman for her write-in campaign.
“I’ve been nominally a Democrat,” he told Murkowski supporters at a rally that September, “but I’ve always voted for whom I consider the best person for office.”
That was then. This week New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote, “to acquiesce to Donald Trump as the Republican nominee is to gamble recklessly with the party’s responsibilities to the republic.” Acquiescing and gambling is exactly what Murkowski is doing by reducing herself to a party loyalist.
And Young is even worse. He complained voters were “following Pied Piper over the edge of the cliff” by watching the news media turn the GOP debates into a joke. “They ought to know better than that” he said. “I mean, nobody wants to read anymore.” But by saying he’d vote for Trump just to keep Clinton from winning, he’s telling everyone else there’s nothing to read besides the lips of the GOP.
• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector.
