Mike Gravel: Rapist and Plunderer of the Earth. The Earth Cried Out, but Mike Gravel did not have Ears to Hear, and thus Alaska will be despoiled. Oh where or where will the polar Bears run to now? Somewher there is an Inuit shedding a single tear.
To explain my ground rules of this long series of Mike Gravel related posts:  I am making it a habit to track the google ratings for Mike Gravel. As soon as this blog falls onto page 3 of google searches, Mike Gravel will become incognito, and I may well make a concerted effort to never mention him again. So long as Mike Gravel remains on page one or two, I will oblige with a steady stream of Mike Gravel posts. I am currently falling, and have slipped from #9 to #11 to #14. This suggests that I will be done with Mike Gravel by the end of the week. This is good, because so far as I can tell I only have a couple more things to say about Mike Gravel.
I will note that there is another Mike Gravel who is mucking up the process. I almost want to send him a missive to yell “Hey! You’re not the former Senator of Alaska and long-shot presidential candidate!”
— Plunderer and Rapist of the Earth.
There is something about Ralph Nader’s quasi-endorsement of Mike Gravel. Not withstanding that I don’t think Mike Gravel’s tax views mesh with Nader’s, though I could be wrong (the last president or major presidential candidate to advocate a national sales tax was Herbert Hoover, incidentally — at which point in time the decision was codified to assign the sales tax as a purview of the state government). But Mike Gravel ated as one may expect an Alaskan politician to act concerning the Alaskan wilderness — Develop it and wage battle against the National Government over there in Washington and the Environmentalists’ land grabs — A Fight For ALASKA, mind you, Defending ALASKA.
Understand that Mike Gravel’s last fight in the Senate put him at odds with fellow Senator Ted Stevens, who had a compromise bill worked out concerning these issues, and who Grael accused of bowing too far to the will of the Environmentalist Lobby. Understand too that Mike Gravel strung this fight out for the entire session, grandstanding for craven political advantage in the run-up to the 1980 election — where he was already tagged as the most vulnerable Incumbent. Actually, had Mike Gravel’s re-election come up in any other way beside the Watergate year of 1974, where he was the only realistic Republic Senate pick-up possibility, Gravel would have been a one-term Senator. Thus, the need for theatrical grandstanding on behalf of defending Alaska against the Federal government and those elitist environmentalists.
But maybe, in the eyes of Ralph Nader, you can place his positioning as ending up where the Environmentalist Community were: opposed. The Center, as defined by Ted Stevens, will not hold, and around the edges you find the common ground.