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The Hill had an interesting report this week on Republican senators who are getting a little uncomfortable with the messages they’re receiving from the GOP base. Evidently, their constituents have all kinds of weird ideas — about the 2020 election, the Jan. 6 attack, the FBI, and the CDC, among other things — and it’s left some senators with an uneasy feeling.
Or put another way, these Republican lawmakers are starting to feel the kinds of concerns that many mainstream observers have felt for many years.
But there was one quote in the report that stood out for me.
“I’m having more ‘rational Republicans’ coming up to me and saying, ‘I just don’t know how long I can stay in this party,’” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). “Now our party is becoming known as a group of kind of extremist, populist over-the-top [people] where no one is taking us seriously anymore.”
The Alaska Republican — who faced right-wing challengers in two recent re-election campaigns, and had to run a write-in campaign in 2010 after losing a GOP primary — went on to say, “You have people who felt some allegiance to the party that are now really questioning, ‘Why am I [in the party?]’”
This struck me as notable, in part because it was provocative, in part because so few statewide Republican officials tend to say things like this on the record, and in part because the Alaskan has taken some similar steps down this road before.
Just two days after the Jan. 6 attack, for example, Murkowski was one of a tiny number of congressional GOP members who called for Donald Trump’s immediate resignation. “I want him to resign. I want him out,” she said on Jan. 8, 2021. The senator added, in reference to her party’s then-president, “He needs to get out.”
But that’s not all Murkowski said. She went on to tell The Anchorage Daily News, “I will tell you, if the Republican Party has become nothing more than the party of Trump, I sincerely question whether this is the party for me.”
As we discussed soon after, the Alaskan was one of Congress’ most interesting Republican members throughout the Trump era, repeatedly going her own way on key issues.
When her party tried to replace the Affordable Care Act with a far-right alternative, she balked. When her party rallied behind Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination, Murkowski was the only GOP senator to vote “no.” When Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell vowed to remain in “total coordination” with the White House during Trump’s first impeachment trial, she made her displeasure known.
And while Murkowski didn’t vote to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial, she was one of a handful of GOP senators to concede that his extortion scheme toward Ukraine was wrong — and she did vote with Democrats to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial.
It’s best not to overstate matters: No one should suggest that the Alaskan has one foot out the door and is about to switch parties. There’s simply no evidence pointing in that direction, and she remains to the right of every member of the Senate Democratic conference, including West Virginia's Joe Manchin.
But it’s also true that there are no other current Republican lawmakers, in either chamber, who are as vocal as Murkowski about the bleak future of GOP politics.
The senator is a lifelong Republican from a Republican family, but as the GOP continues to radicalize, her ties to her party appear to be loosening.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.