Sen. Lisa Murkowski, aghast at Donald Trump’s candidacy and the direction of her party, won’t rule out bolting from the GOP.
The veteran Alaska Republican, one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial amid the aftermath of January 6, 2021, is done with the former president and said she “absolutely” would not vote for him.
“I wish that as Republicans, we had … a nominee that I could get behind,” Murkowski told CNN. “I certainly can’t get behind Donald Trump.”
The party’s shift toward Trump has caused Murkowski to consider her future within the GOP. In the interview, she would not say if she would remain a Republican.
Asked if she would become an independent, Murkowski said: “Oh, I think I’m very independent minded.” And she added: “I just regret that our party is seemingly becoming a party of Donald Trump.”
That’s sort of like saying I need to stop being afraid of setting the world record in the 50m dash. It’s not fear that prevents me from doing it, it’s the way my body is constructed that’s the problem. You’re treating something systemic as though it’s a collective personal failing of each voter.
The good thing is that, unlike with my body and the 50m dash, it is possible to modify our election system to make it possible (and even inevitable) that we have successful third party candidates. This is no easy feat, and I imagine the way to do it is probably by making changes at the state and local level and expanding it from there. But there is no quick way to do it. In any case, simply trying to vote third party in spite of our existing system (especially at the national level) is going to go the same way it has always gone. Even if you make a blip or even a big splash, you’re swimming upstream the whole time, pushing against the system correcting itself back to stability. We saw it with Perot in the 90s when his Reform Party died out really fast.