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.”
We need to stop being afraid of electing third or independent party candidates because the other side might win.
We will keep losing in the end no matter what if we don’t fight for a new political system. Most people agree this isn’t working.
Can we stop urging people to vote for a D/R and focus on independent?
I’ve voted third party most of my life. I will not while Trump and his flunkies run. And I will not urge anyone else to vote third party as I often had prior to 2016.
There has to be an American democracy in order for any voting to matter. Once fascism and autocracy is defeated vote for whomever you fucking want, but not today.
I feel what you’re saying.
This is weird, but I miss Bush and the Az senator who reminded me of a wax museum statue. He was a war vet, but also ancient. At least their faults in my mind were lesser then the blatant issues now. I never thought the US was seriously at risk, just another shitty couple years. I used to think that about all of them.
Now I’m worried…
You’re thinking of John McCain. I disagreed with most of his principles, but respect the fact that he generally stuck to them. Our perspectives and politics were very different, but he seemed to have good character
I wasn’t worried about him over throwing the constitution, that’s for sure. Maybe having health issues…
Edit, not sure why someone feels the need to down vote your answer, it wasn’t an inflammatory comment 🤷
I might’ve voted for him in 2000, but by 2008 he was a different man and worse for it. Still stuck up for Obama when a heckler called him a Muslim. I respect McCain, but also he sold his fucking soul for his run in 2008. I respected him so much more when he stood up to his party when he thought they were wrong.
His defense of Obama was still couched in bigotry. To paraphrase (I think), he said, “Mr. Obama is not a Muslim, he is a decent person.” Yes, he meant well, but he still flubbed it.
Has strong opinions on john mccain. Doesnt know who john mccain is. You can just watch football ya know.
Where did you get strong opinions?
Your football comment make me think you dont know most of the world loves ⚽
You probably mean 🏈?
Are ⚽🏈 people dumb?
An important first step to supporting 3rd parties would be a full switch to ranked choice.
So long as the spoiler effect is at play, you literally only have two choices… voting 3rd or not voting at all are both still choosing one of the big two, you’re just sacrificing what voice you have and letting other voters choose for you.
Here and now, suck it up and choose the lesser evil. We can work on restructuring our political system later - it needs it, but we’ve got bigger fish to fry.
I’m not sure how we fry this fish without fixing our voting system. There’s no real incentive for anyone to do better in the current system.
-this- fish is christofascism, and when christofascists are running, you fry it by voting for whoever has the best chance of beating them. Is it an optimal solution? Fuck no, but it’s the only thing we can do.
Fixing the system is a much longer term goal that may never actually happen if we stay stuck in this death spiral with christofascism, but failing to push against the christofascism isn’t going to help the 3rd parties, it’ll just accelerate the christofascism.
And as shitty as it is, maintaining the status quo is orders of magnitude more preferable than christofascism.
Just electing someone who isn’t a christofacist isn’t a solution. You need the choice to stop being between X and christfacism every election. X is going to lose an election at some point. People are going to stop believing that this is the most important election and of our lives, and we need to overlook anything wrong with X.
Agreed, but it’s the closest thing to a solution we have. Wasting your vote on a 3rd just invites the christofascists to take power - and if we let that happen, there is ZERO chance for a 3rd to take power.
Right now we have two realistic outcomes: red victory or blue victory. You can nudge the odds toward one of those two. That’s it. Your action or inaction only influences those two outcomes. Choose wisely.
I didn’t say waste your vote on 3rd parties. I said to get out of this christofacist death spiral, we probably need to fix our voting system. Obviously, that isn’t going to happen in one election cycle. But we need to be pushing that reform. Because the next election cycle isn’t going to magically be any better than this one without it.
Gotcha, then yeah I misunderstood. The earlier poster I was responding to was advocating for wasting votes on 3rds, so I assumed you were posting under that same context.
Yes our system is shit, and yes it will still probably be shit next cycle too.
I don’t disagree, but in my lifetime, we’ve been in much better shape in the past and still been unwilling to break away from the status quo.
Now that the situation is much more dire, it’s even more frustrating that we lacked the will or desires that could potentially have lessened the chances of this outcome.
I try convincing the less diehard devotees to switch and they’re still hung up on the aspects of the other party they disagree with.
You know when you’re sick and pretty much bed-ridden, and you think “if only I wasn’t sick, I would be working out today and doing such-and-such,” but then as soon as you feel okay again you don’t actually do it or think about it until you physically can’t again?
I feel like it’s like that. That doesn’t mean you should work out while you’re sick. It just means that we need to remember when we’re well.
(To be clear, what I’m saying is I get it and you’re right, but regardless we can’t reasonably do it right now. But once we put fascism down, or if it wanes enough to make a reasonable go of it, we absolutely should remember and fix the voting system).
Pretty good analogy. You’re not wrong, I’m still mad about it. We’ll be our undoing. Feels like Rome…
The Republicans explicitly want me dead. What is my incentive to not vote against them as hard as I can?
Why do you say that?
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/southern-states-pushing-forward-with
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/retaliation-texas-ag-paxton-demands
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/republicans-issue-new-government
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/west-virginia-bill-would-mandate
https://newrepublic.com/article/178576/republicans-reveal-end-game-fight-trans-kids
And, in advance of your reply, please don’t bother telling me the yellow liquid that smells like piss running down my leg is rain. Conversion therapy kills. Getting proper treatment saved my life, and they explicitly want to take that away from me. Address this rather than trying to explain it away, or just don’t waste both of our time. I’m sure you have more productive things to do than deny what I can plainly see.
WTF. I don’t know where to start.
I don’t understand what’s happening in the plains states. It’s like a tornado sucked out all their humanity. I hadnt seen that yet.
You lost me with piss… 🤷
I actually have a lot of empathy for people who are shit on. I don’t hate you or think you should have to feel that way.
The piss comment is a reference to an American idiom. I guess they missed that one in your training.
Training?
A reference to the phrase, “don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining,” ie, I can see what is happening in front of me. And they’d implement this shit on a federal level if they could; there were 40 such provisions they tried to get into the recent budget bills. The Twitter caucus has decided that I am an abomination, that my existence as myself makes me a pedophile, and that pedophiles deserve to be killed. The rest of the party is generally apathetic towards this, and will let them run the show on such matters if they are in an unassailable position. I thought John McCain was someone who I could have voted for in 2008, but he was the last Republican who was even remotely there; even the Republicans who managed the absolute minimum bar of recognizing a coup attempt when it tried to hang them, went along with the program the vast, vast majority of the time, right up until the doors were being hammered on by an angry mob.
I actually mentioned Bush/McCain because they were no where near as bad as now. Voting R wasn’t as scary then.
Can do it now, now it’s a coup, like you said.
That is frustrating, but also peanuts compared to what’s on the table today. We are facing a very real risk of losing our democracy to christofascism, and if we let that happen, the 3rd parties and everyone else who isn’t a christofascist is fucked.
Vote according to the reality of our situation; don’t let an unachievable ideal enable the greater evil.
This is just my opinion, but I do not believe those people most of us associate with chrisofascism are Christian at all.
Again, just my opinion, none of these politicians or people screaming about their faith no anything about Christianity. Or are not at all followers of it.
As is the case with almost every ‘christian’. It’s never been about the religion - that’s just a tool to sell hateful policies.
I usually call it plain old bigotry, but I think some just legitimately don’t know it.
I have met people who had good hearts, but stupid beliefs. I think some are sheltered and do t have perspective.
Then there’s cake lady. AKA, bigot. Exactly what you said.
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.
Given enough time, our first past the post system will always lead to two large coalition parties shaking out of the variety of movements/ideologies we’ve got going on at any point. It just makes too much strategic sense for groups B and C who don’t want group A getting power but don’t agree on anything else to team up to try to get the plurality in a single round of voting that counts as a win under our system.
What I think we need is a) some political upheaval resulting from one of the two parties collapsing, b) a focused and determined effort during that time of upheaval to change our vote counting systems to something less dumb (e.g. insrant run off ranked choice voting is probably the simplest but still effective model).
No.