No. of Recommendations: 23
Remember this?
“We are all afraid….I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real. And that’s not right. But that’s what you’ve asked me to do and so I’m going to use my voice to the best of my ability.” — Lisa Murkowski.
Well, this is now……
Unlike her lack-witted colleagues, Murkowski knew the bill was horrible and pretended to be concerned. She voted for it anyway.
When NBC’s Ryan Nobles asked her about her vote — and Rand Paul’s suggestion that she had been bought off¹ - she froze and tried to stare him down. But watch this closely: This is the woman caught between the cravenness of her political choice and the conscience that she has just shredded.
Murkowski spent much of the aftermath of her vote disingenuously grappling for excuses.
“Do I like this bill? No. But I tried to take care of Alaska's interests," she said. "But I know, I know that in many parts of the country, there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged (sic) by this bill. I don't like that.” She described her vote as “agonizng.”
“We do not have a perfect bill by any stretch of the imagination,” Murkowski told reporters. “My hope is that the House is going to look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet.”
This gives naivete a bad name. Indeed, the notion that the House GOP will make the bill better seems clinically delusional.
In fairness to Murkowski, she was the decisive vote on the ghastly bill only because all but two of her GOP colleagues fell into line behind it. But the word in the Capitol was that Murkowski had planned to vote against the bill if she was not the decisive vote; but would vote yes if she was. As you attempt to parse that political logic, note that a profile in courage it is not.
And so ends Murkowski’s brief stint cosplaying as a Woman of Principle. And I would argue that makes her even worse than other collaborators and toadies
Charlie Sykes
