Kevin McCabe: Feeling politically homeless? Read on …

By KEVIN MCCABE

I run into people all the time who tell me, “Kevin, I feel politically homeless these days.” They see the clamor online, the noise on news sites and TV, the culture-war nonsense filling their phones, and they figure there’s no place left for regular people. With more than 60 percent of us registered undeclared or independent, it’s no wonder so many have checked out of the whole mess.

But they tell me what they actually care about.

They want to afford a home, or at least hang on to the one they spent their lives paying for. They want a neighborhood where you don’t have to lock your truck every time you run into Fred Meyer. They want to go to work, keep most of their paycheck, and finally feel like they’re getting ahead. They want to help a neighbor who’s down on his luck without getting robbed blind by a system that wastes more than it delivers. They want their tax dollars spent on roads, troopers, and schools, not some bureaucrat’s pet project cooked up in Juneau or Washington, D.C.

Here’s what I tell them. You’re not homeless. You’ve just been sold a lie about where common-sense Alaskans actually belong.

We have way more in common than the talking heads want us to believe. For years the media and the D.C. crowd told us that if you want decent schools, real health care, or a hand up for folks in tough spots, you have to call yourself a progressive. And if you’re conservative, you’re painted as someone who doesn’t care about people.

That was never true. It was a slick, dishonest sales pitch.

The truth is simple. Strong communities need a strong economy. You can live on the credit card for a little while, COVID proved that, but you can’t build compassion on borrowed money forever. Sooner or later the bill comes due, interest rates climb, and the first things cut are the very programs people were counting on. That’s not politics. That’s math.

Right now, families are skipping meals because groceries cost too much. Too many Alaskans are one paycheck from disaster. A kid graduating high school can’t even dream of buying a starter home in Anchorage, Wasilla, or Fairbanks. These aren’t accidents. They’re the direct result of Washington printing trillions, crushing Alaska’s resource jobs, and regulating every small business, driller and miner like they’re the enemy, all while calling it “climate protection.”

Government only has three real ways to bring in revenue. Taxes. Trade. And resource development. For years the Obama and Biden administrations strangled energy jobs with executive orders and red tape, killed pipelines, and scared off the investment that used to pay for our schools, our troopers, and our health care. They locked up ANWR, slow-walked every mine, and tried to regulate our timber industry and fishing fleets right out of business.

You can’t fund generous programs, long-trails, or mental health programs, while deliberately killing the industries that pay for them. My dad always said you can’t donate money you don’t have and still call it charity.

Even the popular promises out of Washington sound great until you read the fine print. Shortages. Wait lists. Clinics closing because the funding never shows up. Good intentions don’t keep the lights on. Results do.

That’s where conservatives are different. We want systems that actually work in the real world, not just sound good at a press conference. We have a real chance now, with Washington finally paying attention to Alaska, to turn things in the right direction.

When somebody tells me they’re “socially liberal,” I ask what they mean. Nine times out of ten they say they want people treated with respect, give folks a second chance, good schools, real health care, and they want an efficient and smaller government to stay out of their bedroom and their gun safe.

That’s not radical. That’s traditional American liberty, and it’s exactly what Alaska conservatives have been fighting for since statehood.

The labels moved. We didn’t.

The Democrat Party sprinted hard left on spending, energy, climate scare tactics, and culture, and dragged the word “liberal” with them. Conservatives stayed put, standing for personal responsibility, opportunity for anyone willing to work, keeping more of what you earn, safe streets, strong communities, resource jobs that pay real wages, and protecting the rights the Constitution gave us instead of bargaining them away.

Those aren’t extreme. Those are Alaskan ideas.

Many of us aren’t hard-left progressives or hard-right purists. We’re all just tired of the lies, tired of the noise, and tired of a system that feels rigged against regular people. But staying home doesn’t fix it.

Conservatives aren’t cruel. We’re practical. Real compassion is a trooper showing up in minutes, not hours. Real compassion is a young person walking off an apprenticeship with a paycheck instead of a welfare form. Real compassion is leaving our kids a state and a country that isn’t drowning in debt.

Common sense and compassion go together.

So if you believe in strong, common-sense safety nets that actually lift people up, spending budget dollars wisely instead of flushing them, safe communities and good-paying jobs, opportunity for your kids and grandkids, and freedom balanced with responsibility, then listen close.

You are not politically homeless.

You’ve been home the whole time.

You’re a common-sense Alaska conservative. Your state needs you. Your country needs you. It’s time to get back in the fight and vote like your future depends on it, because it does.

Alaska deserves better. America deserves better. And together, we’re going to deliver it.

Rep. Kevin McCabe is an Alaska legislator representing District 30, Big Lake. He has lived in Alaska for 43 years, served in the US Coast Guard, as a Boeing 747 captain, and was a volunteer firefighter.