Applebaum: Alaska Shows GOP's Govt Spending Hypocrisy
In the Washington Post, Anne Applebaum writes:
Alaska is darker in winter, colder all year and less densely populated than any other state. Alaskans are unique, too: They enjoy a higher level of per capita federal spending than anyone else in the union, as well as a state constitution that they think allows them to defy the Supreme Court. Yet for all of its anomalies - or perhaps because of them - Alaska's current electoral morass might well be a harbinger of the Republican Party's future.
For whatever the reason, the hypocrisy at the heart of the party - and at the heart of American politics - is at its starkest in Alaska. For decades, Alaskans have lived off federal welfare. Taxpayers' money subsidizes everything from Alaska's roads and bridges to its myriad programs for Native Americans. Federal funding accounts for one-third of Alaskan jobs. Nevertheless, Alaskans love to think of themselves as the last frontiersmen, the inhabitants of a land "beyond the horizon of urban clutter," a state with no use for Washington and its wicked ways.
Though they are usually not bothered by this contradiction, in the recent Senate race, Alaska's split personality finally split the Alaskan Republican Party. The party's official candidate, Joe Miller, campaigned as the candidate for the Alaska of would-be rugged individuals. Although endorsed by Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Express, Miller proved an exceptionally poor choice for this role. He said all the right things about fiscal insanity, the repeal of Obamacare, lower taxes and slashing welfare spending. But like many of his comrades in arms, he gave no specifics and offered no plan for how to reach fiscal sanity or replace Obamacare. During the campaign, it also emerged that he had once collected farm subsidies; that his wife had once collected unemployment benefits; and that his family had received state health benefits. Perhaps it's just hard for Alaskans to avoid feeding from the federal trough.
The incumbent and write-in candidate, Lisa Murkowski, represented Alaska-as-federally-funded-paradise. The scion of a political family, Murkowski had no need for hypocrisy. "I will not apologize for seeking more funding for Alaska," she declared when re-launching her campaign. She pointed out that her senatorial seniority gives her a higher rank on committees, which dispense money. She talked up her friendship with the late Sen. Ted Stevens, whose ability to send cash to Alaska was legendary.
And she won: Even if some legal obstacle prevents her from becoming senator, Murkowski's write-in campaign got the most votes. When offered a direct choice, in other words, the majority of Alaskans chose the corrupt, big-spending Republican Party of Murkowski over the shallow, hypocritical radicalism of Miller.
If nothing else, Alaskans' interesting choice must be keeping the Republican leadership awake at night: When faced with the reality of actual funding cuts, a year or two from now, might not other Republican voters suddenly feel they need someone like Murkowski, too?
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