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…
Read the full article here
