You have to give Lisa Murkowski credit.
No, not for voting against the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. That was a no-brainer. But for the stellar performance she gave making her decision appear difficult. Notify the Academy for a Best Supporting Actress nomination.
Murkowski, to all the world, agonized about this decision. Fretted over it. Lost sleep. Put her seat in the Senate on the line to do the right thing, to vote her conscience, to stand up to her party.
It was a great act, in that it was so convincing, and appropriate, as putting on a good show is elemental to success in politics.
The truth is that Murkowski would no sooner put Kavanaugh on the U.S. Supreme Court as she would allow him to date her teen-age daughter, if she had a teen-age daughter.
Kavanaugh represents the creepy cabal of right-wing Mafiosi who took over the Republican party starting 30 or more years ago, using big money, saber-rattling and a rather brilliant duping of Christian fundamentalists on social issues.
Kavanaugh is well-camouflaged as a respectable lawyer, when in fact he’s a product of the virulent strain of Republicanism, a descendant of the mink-coat mob of Republican ladies who spat on Lyndon and Ladybird Johnson in Dallas in 1960.
These folks have great hair, fancy pedigrees and diplomas from famous universities, but they’re a mob, nonetheless. To them, honor means nothing. Truth means nothing. Justice means nothing. To them, winning is the only thing and the ends always justify the means.
But don’t take that from me. Take it from former U.S. presidents like Republican Jerry Ford, who said he had nothing in common with Newt Gingrich, who engineered to shut down the government to score a few political points. Take it from former Democratic president Jimmy Carter, who describes the U.S. government today as an oligarchy, comparable to Russia. Or take it from former President Barack Obama, who very accurately described his politics as akin to that of moderate Republicans in the 1980s.
The Republican leadership is nowhere near the center. These yo-yos are running the party of Lincoln off the end of the political spectrum, over a cliff. Apparently, Dan Sullivan, senator for Ohio and certain parts of Alaska, and Don Young will go over it with them. (Don has always played the role of General Custer, questing for a Little Bighorn to prove his manliness.)
Murkowski is not with the wack-job GOP majority for a couple reasons, including that she owes her political life to Alaskan moderates and Democrats who tipped her unprecedented and successful write-in campaign in 2010. Also, Murkowski is no fool. She knows enough to understand that winning in politics is about occupying the political center, and that her foolhardy cohorts – like Sullivan and Young – are way over to one side.
That means that when U.S. and Alaska voters right the listing ship of state – as voters invariably do – Murkowski will still be on it, while Sullivan, Young and company will be overboard, all wet and swimming for their political lives.
But for now, drunken pirates have commandeered the ship, and Murkowski, a member of the ship’s surviving crew, is under close watch by her captors in the GOP.
If she votes against promoting a scurvy dog like Kavanaugh, she must make it look like a most difficult and pained decision.
Bravo.