The Alaska Republican Party has a big problem. For some reason, it tolerates disloyalty from its elected politicians, and worse yet, it appears unable to do anything about it. The seven Republicans who will join with Democrats in the incoming legislative session are getting away with political treason. The AK GOP needs to hear that Alaskan voters are unhappy about it and are demanding action from the GOP leadership to correct this problem. If they don’t act, voters have alternatives, and I don’t mean voting for Democrats.

The situation for conservative Alaskan voters is analogous to a hostage situation. Every two years, we are given the choice of voting for liberal Democrats or RINO Republicans. So, we hold our noses and vote for the best Republican candidate, hoping things will work out this time, but they never do. The Republicans in Juneau get together and either marginalize their most conservative members or, worse yet, become party traitors who join with the Democrats to loot our state coffers to pay for their own personal agendas. This pattern is repeated in election after election, and the public is forced to go along with it.

The GOP leadership may not recognize it, but this is a crisis point for them.

This year looked to be different. In the November election, Alaskans overwhelmingly chose Republicans to lead us. We voted in large numbers for Republican Donald Trump to be president. The voters also elected Republican Nick Begich to replace Democrat Mary Peltola. They even elected Republican majorities in both houses of our State Legislature.

This should have been a resounding Republican victory for our state, but it wasn’t. For some reason, seven local Republican legislators became turncoats, like modern-day Benedict Arnolds. They joined with the enemy Democrats to form liberal governing coalitions in both houses of the Legislature.

Since the announcement of their betrayal, there has been nothing but silence from the leadership of the AK GOP. They have done nothing to police the disloyalty of these individuals. They haven’t even given a comment of condemnation in the newspaper. Even worse, I have heard some Republican Party members say they are helpless, and that there is nothing they can do to punish these individuals. Someone needs to tell them the Seward’s Folly first rule of leadership. Maybe it should be printed on a large poster and hung on the wall at the Republican headquarters in Anchorage.

For years, Alaskans have put up with this situation, hostage to a system where two political parties dominate, with not a dime’s worth of difference between them. Voters have had to shut up and accept whatever feckless RINO we got stuck with because of the weakness of the AK GOP, but not anymore. The world is changing, and there is an excellent example in the UK of what happens when conservative parties abandon their voters.

The British Conservative Party, sometimes known as the Tory Party, is the oldest political party in the world. It was founded in 1834 but may soon come to an end, thanks to former member Nigel Farage.

Mr. Farage was a member of the Conservative Party and once served as the UK representative to the European Parliament in Brussels. Disillusioned by what he saw as a member of the EU government, he left the Conservatives and became a prominent leader of the Brexit movement in Great Britain. For those unfamiliar with Brexit, it was a grassroots political movement that worked to get Britain to leave its membership in the European Union. When the idea was first brought up, nobody thought this proposal had any chance of success, but Mr. Farage’s team persisted and won the vote on this issue in 2016.

While the Brexit movement was successful, the voters did not get the results they wanted. The Prime Minister at the time was Boris Johnson, a member of the Conservative party. Johnson botched the job of managing Britain’s exit from the EU. So, in June of last year, the voters elected a new Labor government led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Liberals, of course, called this a great victory for their Party, but it was more a repudiation of the Conservative government than an endorsement of the left wing.

Then, Mr. Farage threw another monkey wrench into British politics.

Although he retired after the Brexit vote in 2016, last summer, Mr. Farage decided to rejoin politics as a member of the Reform UK Party. This new political party had been created from what remained of his original Brexit grassroots group. In June of 2024, Farage and four other Reform UK MPs were successfully elected as Members of Parliament. Since then, Farage claims that voters have been flocking to his new party because of the ineffectiveness of the Conservatives. Farage says his new party now has more members than the established Conservative Party. Should this be true, and if Reform UK can elect Mr. Farage as Prime Minister in the next election, it could signal the end of the Tories as a significant political party in the UK. This is a foreshadowing of what could happen here in Alaska.

When the AK GOP does nothing about the seven traitors in Juneau, they are telling the voters that they are weak and ineffective. Voters understand that by their silence, the Alaska GOP leadership has tacitly endorsed the Democrat-led caucuses in the Alaska legislature. The GOP leadership may not recognize it, but this is a crisis point for them. The voters are not going to tolerate a weak and impotent GOP for much longer and will be looking for alternatives. Should anyone want to start a conservative “Make Alaska Great Again” party to replace the Alaska GOP, I will be the first to donate to help them get started. As the old saying goes, Republicans, you either lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.

The views expressed here are those of the author. Read more posts at Seward’s Folly substack.

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