She’s not perfect but she’s better than all the rest:
Senator Lisa Murkowski was listing all the ways that President Trump’s efforts to slash the federal government had harmed Alaska, from the funding freezes on programs the state depends on to the layoffs of federal workers who live there, when she delivered something of an understatement.
“It’s a challenging time right now,” she recently told a crowd at a state infrastructure conference here in the state’s largest city. “I could use nice words about it — but I don’t.”
At a time when the Republican Congress has grown increasingly deferential to Mr. Trump, Ms. Murkowski has veered in the opposite direction from her party, using sharp words and her vote on the Senate floor to push back on him and his administration time and again.
They’re coming for her:
Senate Republicans have a relatively small majority, with three votes to spare. And a number of other G.O.P. senators have publicly aired qualms with the bill’s provisions dealing with Medicaid, including Josh Hawley of Missouri and Susan Collins of Maine. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have agitated for even deeper cuts to the program and others like it, warning that the bill as passed by the House would balloon federal deficits to unacceptable levels.
But when the Club for Growth, the anti-tax group, unveiled an ad campaign last week pressing the Senate to pass the bill, they targeted a single Republican who they said must act to avoid a looming tax hike.
“It’s in Lisa Murkowski’s hands to stop it by extending and expanding Trump’s tax cuts,” says the ad, which is running in both Alaska and Washington. “Tell Murkowski: Don’t block Trump’s agenda.”
Mr. Trump has made it clear that he does not appreciate Ms. Murkowski’s dissent, including her among a group of Republican senators he called “unbelievably disloyal.”
Ms. Murkowski, who at 68 is serving her fourth full term in the Senate, has never been easily cowed by the prevailing political winds in her party. She was first appointed to the Senate in 2002 by her father, Senator Frank Murkowski, who had served there for two decades before resigning to become governor of Alaska. And she has held on to the seat through a period of remarkable political upheaval inside the G.O.P., maintaining a centrist bent and an independent streak along the way.
She even voted to impeach Trump and got re-elected anyway.
Alaska is a red state although it does have an independent streak. But Trump backed her rival there and lost. I think it does go to show that people will reward integrity. Too bad more Republicans don’t have some.