For more than a year, Kelly Tshibaka has been claiming that Sen. Lisa Murkowski “can‘t run as a Republican.”

It’s still not true, even as a few hundred Republican Party right-wing zealots do their best to purge Murkowski with a bumbling effort that is part Stalinist Russia and part Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

The party wants to prevent Murkowski from being listed on the ballot as a member of the Republican Party.

What’s next? Maybe the GOP enforcers will erase Murkowski’s image from photographs and penalize anyone who puts up a Murkowski sign or mentions her name.

The GOP will also try to purge a small number of Republican legislators who joined the coalition in the state House with Democrats.

In trying to ditch Murkowski and others, the Republican cancel culture enthusiasts are saying there is no room in the organization for anyone who questions Donald Trump or veers from Fox News talking points.

Ted Stevens would have no place in this party and neither would Wally Hickel, Jay Hammond, Clem Tillion, John Butrovich, Arliss Sturgulewski, Terry Miller and dozens of others who had the ability to think for themselves.

Stevens would be persona non grata to the party bosses because he referred to Democratic Sen. Dan Inouye as “brother.” Hammond would be condemned because without the Democratic members of the state House the Permanent Fund amendment would never have been added to the Alaska Constitution.

What the GOP zealots forget is that both major parties are minor parties in Alaska. There are 340,000 voters who are undeclared or nonpartisan, compared to 77,000 Democrats and 142,000 Republicans.

The zealots also forget that Murkowski has the backing of key Republicans not named Trump. Sen. Mitch McConnell is correct when he says she is "a key player in advancing bipartisan legislation." McConnell has pledged to spend $7 million on her behalf.

Murkowski has shown a talent for getting things done in Washington, D.C., instead of just talking and whining. By any measure, she is one of the most successful political leaders in state history, having long since escaped her father’s shadow.

I disagree with her on many big issues, but she takes her job seriously, works hard and is smart. The cartoon portrait of her that Tshibaka is trying to sell is a fraud.

Suzanne Downing, public relations organ for the GOP zealots, claims the new party rules will change all registered Republicans in Alaska from members of the party to “participants.”

Candidates will be “members,” under the GOP junior-high-level wordplay scheme, and members will have to demonstrate their allegiance to the party zealots.

This is straight from the “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” playbook.

Membership in the party will now be determined by a membership committee. The membership committee claims it will have the power to write Murkowski and others out of the picture. The GOP wants to ban Murkowski from being listed as a Republican on the ballot, along with other Republicans.

GOP National Committeewoman Cynthia Henry, whose family owns HOPS Hallmark stores in Alaska, will chair the 17-member membership committee, along with GOP National Committeeman Mike Tauriainen.

It will be their job to claim Murkowski and others are not members of the Republican Party, inventing a purity test that the offenders will fail.

Downing claims the attorney general and the Dunleavy administration will probably back the purge. They will “probably not want to go against a political group that limits its membership by forcing it to accept members.”

The party will try to pursue the eviction, perhaps with Dunleavy’s help, but I doubt it will succeed.

This scheme is illegal. It reeks of the authoritarian impulse to claim that truth is whatever the party bosses claim it is.

The state form used for candidates to register is a simple one. The pertinent portion is this:

Candidates have the option of listing their “political affiliation” on the ballot. The candidate can ask that the affiliation on the voter registration card be used or that the candidate be listed as nonpartisan or undeclared.

Murkowski remains affiliated with the Republican Party. It’s not up to the party zealots to decide how she prefers to be listed on the ballot.

Alaska law permits a candidate to seek a nomination if he or she is registered to vote as a member of the political party. Changing the word “member” to “participant” is the GOP attempt to evade the law.

Even if the word game is accepted by the attorney general, Murkowski and others regarded as renegades could still accurately claim to be registered GOP “participants.”

In 2018, the party attempted and failed to purge Homer Rep. Paul Seaton, claiming he was not a real Republican. Seaton, an excellent GOP legislator, opted to run as nonpartisan and lost. He accurately sized up the party campaign against him.

“I was a Republican for 50 years, and with the things going on now, I’ve decided that I change to non-partisan,” he told KBBI.

“They’re choosing a model of democracy that is similar to Iran or Hong Kong in China,” Seaton told the Homer News.

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