For a state used to the briefest of presidential stopovers, President Obama’s extended visit this week has been an opportunity to savor — and, for some, to push back against his agenda.
For a state used to the briefest of presidential stopovers, President Obama’s extended visit this week has been an opportunity to savor — and, for some, to push back against his agenda.
In the sparsely populated 49th state, waving Alaskans have lined motorcade routes. On Tuesday near Seward, Espresso Simpatico made him an offer he couldn’t refuse — if only he’d stopped in: “President Obama drinks free.” In Dillingham, where he touched down in the rain Wednesday, a wildlife stop was dubbed the “Bearack Viewing Area.”
But this is a red state governed just years ago by conservative sensation Sarah Palin. The Last Frontier has never voted for the visiting Democrat. Its congressional delegation is solidly Republican. Gov. Bill Walker, who won election as an independent in 2014, is a former member of the GOP.
And the Alaska Republican Party has rolled out the not-very-welcome mat. When the president gave a speech Monday rebuking climate-change “deniers,” the state party tweeted, “This president is really a downer.” When he visited melting glaciers Tuesday, it sneered, “#Obama wilderness hike to Exit Glacier. Alaskans are falling over laughing.”
Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) blasted Obama’s speech at a conference here of Arctic nation leaders, calling it a “song and dance on climate change” and saying that it “was exactly what we didn’t want from the president, which was to use Alaska as a prop for an extreme, economy-killing, environmental agenda.”
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