Alaska’s Shame

GOP voters nominate an indicted senator.

DENVER (National Review Online) - Democrats here are preparing to anoint Barack Obama as their nominee. Despite his long record of alliances with Chicago’s political machine and his use of government positions to help his friends and donors — and possibly himself — they are still fooling themselves with the idea that he stands for “hope,” “change,” and a “new politics.”

But on Tuesday, two time zones to the west of here, Republican voters did not even have the option of fooling themselves. They knew exactly what they were doing, and they did it anyway. Their senator had recently been indicted on seven federal charges, and they re-nominated him. He won an embarrassing 63 percent majority in a crowded field in last night’s primary election.

Federal prosecutors accuse seven-term senator Ted Stevens (R., Alaska) of taking gifts from parties interested in legislation and concealing them on his financial disclosure forms for seven years in a row. But a large majority of voters in Alaska’s Republican primary just did not care. They love pork — something Stevens has proven expert in providing — and evidently they don’t mind self-dealing in their politics.