Money for Murkowski

Some might say I’m — ahem — going rogue. I’ve been considering making my first-ever campaign contribution — to a Republican. If I collect my nerve, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, may be the first beneficiary of my newfound generosity.

Let me explain. It’s true that I’m hesitant to identify myself too closely with a party.

But this is not because I’m a wavering voter who believes that Democrats present an admirably liberal stance on social issues, and Republicans’ trickle down economic policies might create something more than trickle-up poverty.

No, the real reason I don’t toe the party line is because Democratic candidates often aren’t blue enough.

Even if I lend my financial support to a candidate of the party that opposed the public option for health care, the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and a host of other measures, my principles haven’t changed.

Accordingly, Sarah Palin would likely question whether I have really gone rogue. For her and others affiliated with the Tea Party movement, “rogueishness” has come to denote a paradoxical anti-party radicalism that conveniently bolsters Republican interests.

The movement itself is fraught with internal contradiction and an unclear sense of Tea Party identity.

So it’s hard to say whether Sen. Lisa Murkowski wasn’t Republican enough for Palin or whether she was too close to the party for the former governor’s taste.

As a result of Palin’s endorsement of the Tea Party underdog Joe Miller, Senator Murkowski lost the endorsement of her party.

Thanks to the desperation of left-leaning and moderate Alaskans, Murkowski’s ambitious write-in campaign has a chance of becoming the second of its kind to succeed in U.S. history.

What has led so many Alaskans to rally behind their Republican senator?

Many voters in one of the nation’s reddest states recognize that Miller’s views about issues such as abortion and hate crimes are simply too rigid and would be damaging to the welfare of all American citizens if enacted.

Murkowski’s positions on these issues display admirable moderation.

Unlike Miller, Murkowski would not vote to make abortion illegal even in cases of rape or incest.

Whereas Miller opposes all hate crime laws, Senator Murkowski joined with a few other reasonable Republican senators, including Indiana’s Sen. Richard Lugar, in voting to approve the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act in 2009.

Murkowski can’t be said to be left of center. Republicans for Environmental Protection gave her an average rating of 26 out of 100 from 2005 to 2009.

In this ominous midterm election season, we have to learn to recognize friends wherever they are to be found.

Even if that means throwing our support behind the lesser of two evils.

My new-found bipartisanship may be in service of partisan interests.

But in the era of Obama and Palin, a time when we identify electoral mobilization along ideological rather than party lines, I feel justified in lending Murkowski my $5.

In this Republican-oriented election, friends of liberal causes may gain the most by picking amenable enemies than close friends.


E-mail: wallacen@indiana.edu