Alaska’s U.S. senators find themselves once again on the opposite sides of a Trump headline.
This time, it’s on a Senate resolution critical of the U.S. House’s impeachment proceedings—calling for the House to take a formal vote on opening impeachment proceedings—but it’s not nearly as scandalous as the split might suggest.
Murkowski told Alaska Public Media today that she wants to see the House follow its impeachment process, including holding a vote on the impeachment proceedings.
“I think my middle name was ‘Process,’” Murkowski told the outlet. “I am so boring this way. … In order for that to be respected, you have to have a process that people believe has credibility. And so when everything is done behind closed doors, how do we know? How do we know?”
It’s a position that agrees with many of the fundamental positions of the Senate resolution, but Murkowski’s statements stop well short of painting Trump as a victim or calling the proceedings “illegitimate.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today announced that the House would be holding such a vote on Thursday. The move could put battleground Democrats in a potentially tricky position heading in to the 2020 election, which some political experts say explains Senate Republicans’ push for the vote.
Murkowski found herself on the opposite end of the issue along with moderate and sometimes Trump critics U.S. Sens. Mitt Romney and Susan Collins. Last week, Romney told reporters that he would like to see the House take a vote on impeachment because he wanted to see it follow a normal process.
Sullivan, meanwhile, is a co-sponsor of the Senate resolution.
Sullivan told Alaska Public Media that he didn’t see the House process as “fair or even-handed.”
When pushed on whether he thinks Trump was acting solely in the country’s interest when he pressured Ukraine into investigating the family of political opponent Joe Biden, Sullivan said he didn’t think that was an appropriate question.
“Look I’m just trying to … what the issue has been right now is, (does) the transcript demonstrate an impeachable offense?” he told Alaska Public Media, and in his view it doesn’t.
Why it matters
It’s another division between Alaska’s senators, but this one is a matter of degrees. Both Sullivan and Murkowski ultimately are asking that the House take a more official process when it comes to the impeachment inquiries.
Where they differ is that Sullivan appears to have made up his mind that Trump has not committed any impeachable wrongdoing when it comes to dealings with Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Murkowski has stopped short of sounding off on many of the claims. She said at a recent event in Alaska that it was ““troubling … that even before there has been any considered review, that people have decided.”
Ohio Dan neglects to mention that the transcript is based on notes and not a true transcript. Subsequent depositions reveal significant segments of the conversation are not included in the transcript. Sullivan will sink in the 2020 election along with the Trump Titantic.
Bye-Bye, Ohio Dan. Thanks for nothing.