It turns out that, under Trump, the GOP is gunning for pretty much every social program, no matter how much popular support those programs have, nor even how many voters in GOP states are affected.
Every so often, Murkowski gets props for saying she is horrified or appalled by one authoritarian action or another; yet, when it came to voting on what may be the most consequential and destructive piece of legislation in Trump’s second term, she held out for a few carve outs to protect Alaskans from the ravages being inflicted on residents of every other state before voting in favor of the legislation. Contrast her miserable behavior with that of late Senator John McCain, when he refused to be the deciding vote to topple the Affordable Care Act with no replacement program ready to catch those who would lose their health care.
Media outlets reported the vote as being decided by Vice President JD Vance, who stepped in to break the tie. That is technically true. But since everyone knew that Vance was a “yes” on this, it’s more accurate to say that Murkowski, the supposed grown-up in a room full of MAGA nutcases, was the tiebreaker here.
The Alaskan knew, as soon as she had done it, that she had done a very bad thing. Like a wayward child looking for a moral free pass from her parents, she promptly sought to exculpate herself by saying it was “agonizing” to vote for the bill. One assumes it wasn’t as agonizing for her as the consequences of this vote will be for the tens of millions of already low-income Americans whose lives are about to get a whole lot worse. One assumes her mental anguish won’t be as pronounced as it will be for the millions of immigrants, including refugees, suddenly blocked from accessing safety net programs. One assumes, too, that her anguish at transferring tens of billions of dollars away from environmental, health, nutritional, and educational programs, and into policing and incarcerating undocumented immigrants won’t quite match the experiences of hard-working men and women caught up in the accelerating ICE sweeps that this bill so copiously funds and sent to such places as Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz.” One assumes her anguish at hugely increasing the national debt so as to channel trillions of dollars in tax cuts to the super-wealthy won’t rise to the same levels of pain as will the pain of those students who can no longer access affordable loans for their graduate studies, or those renewable energy businesses that will now be destroyed because of the industry-killing taxes targeted against them by the authors of this malicious legislation.
In short, Murkowski’s faux anguish rings as hollow as did Susan Collins’ self-serving rationale for voting to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Collins said she had been promised Kavanaugh would respect precedent and wouldn’t rip up established rules of the road. That, of course, didn’t last long, as evidenced by the Dobbs ruling. Murkowski went one better than Collins: she didn’t even get fake promises from MAGA Republicans not to hurt poor people; all she got were a few minor carve outs regarding precisely how many poor people in Alaska would be fed into the woodchipper and at what speed.
In short, if you are looking for GOP “moderates” to ride to the rescue, you are setting yourself up to be disappointed. Murkowski won’t save America, just like Susan Collins didn’t save abortion rights. This generation of GOP political figures has utterly dirtied itself in the Trumpian mud. You want change? Vote the bums out. Every single last one of them. Campaign against Murkowski just as hard as you would against any other MAGA enthusiast. Sure, Murkowski occasionally talks the talk. But when it comes to walking the walk, it turns out that, as with the Master of the House in Les Miserables, “there’s not much there.”
by Sasha Abramsky, The Nation | Read more:
Image: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
[ed. 100 percent. My former senator when I lived in Alaska. What a disgrace. Her father Frank (failed bank president) held the same seat for many years before resigning to run for governor (and appointed her to his vacant senate position) and was much, much worse, but that's not saying much. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Alaskans should never forget. Let's get Mary Peltola (former US representative who lost to another brain-dead MAGA bozo in the last election) to run against her next time around, I think everyone knows clearly by now who she really is (and isn't). UPDATE: Looks like I was right.]
