The Republican Party that shaped Senator Lisa Murkowski’s political identity no longer exists. In its place stands a movement defined by grievance, enforced conformity, and allegiance to personality rather than principle. Murkowski has not undergone a sudden ideological conversion. The party around her has moved, hardened and narrowed. Her record now makes one reality unavoidable. She aligns more closely with Democratic values than with those exercised by the Trumpian Republican Party. The logical response is to caucus accordingly.

Murkowski’s career has long reflected independence. Appointed to the Senate in 2002 and later elected in her own right, she built her standing on pragmatism, institutional respect and Alaska-first governance. She favored problem solving over posturing, coalition building over coercion, and durable policy over symbolic outrage. Those instincts once fit comfortably within a broad Republican coalition. They no longer do.

The rupture became undeniable in 2010. After losing the Republican primary to Joe Miller, a Tea Party-backed challenger, Murkowski refused to vanish. Her write-in campaign defied precedent and party machinery alike. Alaskans returned her to the Senate by choosing experience over extremism. That victory was more than personal redemption. It was an early warning that Murkowski’s values and the party’s base were drifting apart.

That election marked the beginning of a widening gap. While Murkowski survived electorally, her relationship with the Republican Party never recovered. Loyalty tests replaced debate. Compliance replaced competence. Over time, Murkowski’s affiliation became a matter of label rather than alignment.

Formally, she remained a Republican who caucused with Republicans. Substantively, she became something else. Over the last five years, her voting record reveals a consistent pattern. She defended the Affordable Care Act when repeal threatened rural and Indigenous health care. She opposed efforts to erode reproductive autonomy through federal mandate. She resisted attacks on judicial independence, election legitimacy and constitutional checks. Again and again, she chose institutions over impulse, law over loyalty, and governance over grievance.

The last year has brought those tensions to the surface. Murkowski has openly broken with Republican leadership on health care, warning against policies driven by ideology rather than outcomes. She has challenged executive overreach and questioned the normalization of cruelty as governance. These positions once fell within a bipartisan center. Today, they place her at odds with a party that treats dissent as betrayal.

That conflict now reaches a climax with Murkowski’s stance on defunding Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This is not a marginal policy dispute. ICE has become a defining symbol of Trump-era Republican power, immune from oversight and insulated from reform. To challenge its funding is to challenge the party’s identity. Murkowski’s position rests on concerns about due process, civil liberties and federal accountability. Those concerns align squarely with Democratic priorities and stand in direct opposition to Republican leadership that equates enforcement with virtue and restraint with weakness.

This moment strips away the remaining ambiguity. One can oppose a nominee and endure. One can break on a bill and survive. But to question ICE itself places Murkowski outside the bounds of today’s Republican orthodoxy. The party will not move toward her. The pressure will intensify. Continuing to caucus with Republicans now preserves only a fiction that benefits party leadership, not Alaskans or democratic norms.

Meanwhile, Alaska is changing. Once reliably red, the state is now unmistakably purple. Urban growth, younger voters, stronger Native political participation, and ranked choice voting have weakened partisan extremes. Murkowski’s electoral strength increasingly depends on independents, moderates, and Democrats who value stability over spectacle. Her political survival already rests on coalition politics rather than party allegiance.

That reality creates opportunity. By caucusing with Democrats now, Murkowski could reshape the Senate landscape ahead of 2026. Her move would not be ideological surrender. It would be honest alignment. It would reflect where she already stands on health care, civil liberties, immigration enforcement and democratic norms. It would also give Democrats a credible path to Senate majority control.

The question is no longer whether the Republican Party has left Murkowski behind. It has. The question is whether she will act on what her record already shows. She believes in checks and balances, in facts over fury, in service over submission. She believes that power must be constrained and government must be accountable.

History rarely rewards hesitation when clarity arrives. Murkowski has reached that moment. The party she once trusted has moved on. Her values have not. If she intends to remain faithful to the principles that carried her through a write-in victory and sustained her through years of pressure, the conclusion is unavoidable. The time for Sen. Murkowski to caucus with Democrats is now.

Van Abbott is a long-time resident of Alaska and California. He has held financial management positions in government and private organizations, and is now a full-time opinion writer. He served in the late 1960s in the Peace Corps as a teacher.