Murkowski in Alaska?

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D5CAV
Posts: 2428
Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2008 2:48 am

Murkowski in Alaska?

Post by D5CAV »

Can someone from Alaska explain how Murkowski remains in office?

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video ... r_him.html

I could almost understand her surviving election in Texas, but Alaska?
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Netpackrat
Posts: 13983
Joined: Fri Aug 15, 2008 11:04 pm

Re: Murkowski in Alaska?

Post by Netpackrat »

Well, it's pretty simple actually. The last time she had a serious primary challenge, the guy who beat her turned out to be an amoral douchebag. Stuff about him that hadn't really come out during the primary became public knowledge prior to the general election. At that point, voting for Murkowski as a write-in became preferable to letting either the republican douchebag or the democrat douchebag win. Polling showed that the republican douche was probably going to win anyway, so enough of the democrats abandoned their own candidate (who came in third) to also write in Murkowski as being the lesser of evils.

Next time around, she had spent the previous 6 years mostly behaving as a normal republican, so she won her primary with relative ease. I guess she figures she's not up again for another 4 years, but that's only part of it. Her vote against Kavanaugh is blatant pandering to the native vote up here, regardless of anything she actually said about it.

In a nutshell, the Native Claims Act here was intended as a repudiation of the reservation system that was set up in the Lower 48, because it was basically a failure in terms of helping the Indian population to succeed in the modern world. Instead of setting aside lands as self-governing entities under tribal governments, the Alaska model set up Native Corporations with big land grants to settle the natives' claims, with the goal that the resources would be used to help the natives ultimately provide themselves with employment and success, while avoiding the failed reservation model.

Now they want to have their cake and eat it too... They have been trying through the courts for a while now, to get their corporate lands and many of the villages in which they live, to be ruled as "indian country" so they can set up tribal governments and their own system of kangaroo courts. Apparently Kavanaugh is seen as an obstacle to this; hence Lisa's vote against him.

Hopefully there is a non-douchey candidate up against her in the 2022 primary. Personally, I am planning on finally trading in my AIP affiliation and registering as a republican so I can vote against her. However, if the choice is Sarah vs. Lisa, or something similar, I will probably still stay home.
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