After launching her Republican presidential campaign in February 2023, Nikki Haley received zero endorsements from the Senate Republican conference. Late last week, that finally changed, when two GOP senators — Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins — publicly threw their support behind the former ambassador.
The timing wasn’t ideal. After all, Murkowski and Collins could’ve made this decision months ago, before Donald Trump had effectively locked up the party’s nomination, and it might’ve had more of an impact. That said, both Alaska and Maine are among the states where Republican voters will be casting Super Tuesday ballots, and it stands to reason that Haley was delighted to pick up the senators’ endorsements.
But as it turns out, Murkowski didn’t just announce her support for Haley, the Alaskan also shared some thoughts on Haley’s national rival. NBC News reported:
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Saturday she “could not” vote for former President Donald Trump in the 2024 election should he win her party’s nomination again — but that also doesn’t mean she could cross party lines for President Joe Biden, either.
Murkowski didn’t elaborate on exactly what she intends to do with her 2024 ballot, except to indicate that she doesn’t intend to vote for either of the major parties’ likely nominees.
As things now stand, she joins Sen. Mitt Romney in a very small club: Incumbent Republican senators who’ve publicly said they won’t vote for Trump in 2024.
Given Murkowski’s recent ideological trajectory, her decision to reject her party’s former president is provocative, but not altogether surprising. It was, after all, just last year when the Alaska Republican said, “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 senator added, “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.’”
The senator — 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?]’”
It was hardly her only comment along these lines. As regular readers might recall, just two days after the Jan. 6 attack, Murkowski was one of a tiny number of congressional GOP members who called for 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.”
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. All of which is to say, the Republican’s comments to NBC News about her 2024 plans were hardly out of character. They also did not go unnoticed. On midday Saturday, Republican Sen. J.D. Vance, who appears to be auditioning to serve as Trump’s running mate, published a notable item to social media. “I have a long memory,” the Ohioan wrote. “If you’re fighting Trump and his endorsed candidates politically today, don’t ask for my help in a year with your legislation or your pet projects.” Vance didn’t mention Collins or Murkowski by name, though his tweet came less than a day after his fellow Senate Republicans announced that they’re backing Haley. Putting aside the fact that Vance used to sound an awful lot like Murkowski when denouncing Trump, before his ideological metamorphosis, his online message was a rather striking threat. To hear the Trump sycophant tell it, Murkowski and Collins aren’t just supporting the wrong conservative Republican, they’ll also pay a legislative price — to be imposed by their own party’s members — for daring to keep their distance from the former president’s pernicious parade. By all appearances, Murkowski was already feeling despair about the state of the contemporary GOP. Vance’s missive almost certainly made matters worse. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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