GOP Whines, Misses Lesson in Alaska

A prominent conservative blog recently slagged Alaska's ranked-choice system for "disenfranchising" Republican voters after the Democrat candidate for the House of Representatives won in a three-way race among Sarah Palin (R), Nick Begich (R), and Mary Peltola (D).

Image by The Alaska Landmine, via Wikimedia Commons, license.

This is ridiculous: Most of Begich's voters either would rather have had a Democrat (and selected Peltola as their second choice) or might have stayed home given a choice between Palin and Peltola (and so did not register a second choice).

Rather than whine, as Senator Tom Cotton did, about the fact that 60% of the voters in Alaska wanted "a Republican" and didn't get one, the GOP should be grateful for the information noted above and tabulated elsewhere.

(Another possible implication of Cotton's remarks is that the system was confusing, but 85% of the voters in Alaska might beg to differ.)

This result says what practically everyone knows, which is that many people within their own party are quite unhappy with loose-cannon, "populist" candidates like Palin, and that perhaps the GOP should do some further polling of their own to find out why, or to determine if there might be someone more appealing to what would appear to be two large factions within their own party.

Or, better yet, the GOP could take some time to consider what made America great in the first place, forcefully articulate a positive case for that, and so appeal more broadly to potential voters.

This would be far better and more successful in the long run than its decades-old practice of accepting the same moral premises as the Democrats, almost apologetically trying to smuggle in freedom from time to time, and compromising at every turn -- which makes blowhards like Trump and Palin look good only by comparison.

This voter could certainly do with an actual alternative to the left.

-- CAV