This is the story that never ends, and it goes on and on my friends. Seriously. A month has come and gone since Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) suffered a devastating loss in her bid to seek reelection as a United States Senator from Alaska. Her opponent was the no name attorney from Fairbanks, Joe Miller (R-AK) who won the bitterly contested primary by just 2,002 votes (about 1.8% of the vote). His sudden success and momentum have been attributed to the last minute flood of support and money from the Tea Party Express as well as an endorsement from former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK). Yet it now seems that Lisa Murkowski is unwilling to accept the fact that she lost and has announced her bid to run as a write-in candidate as a last ditch effort to reclaim her Senate seat. Are he actions an act of unprecedented courage or an unwillingness to admit defeat? Let's examine the facts!
The Sweet and Simple Facts
Surprisingly this is a relatively easy issue to cover because nearly all opinions, pundits, and polls agree: Lisa Murkowski is seeking a selfish way to retain her career. This last move seems to have cemented itself into the public conscience as being a perfect example of why change is so necessary. As the daughter of a former Senator and Governor of Alaska, Murkowski represented a political dynasty, almost an Alaskan Kennedy of sorts. In 2002, she was appointed to the US Senate by her father, to fill the seat he had left to become governor, which immediately turned some people away from the moderate right senator, but Republican Alaska reelected her again in 2004. It was also public knowledge that a low level feud of sorts existed between the Murkowski Family and Sarah Palin. Lisa Murkowski was selected over Sarah Palin to become the sitting US Senator by then Governor Frank Murkowski, in response to which Palin ran against him four years later, defeating him handily. In 2009, when Sarah Palin announced her resignation, Lisa Murkowski was one of the first to public denounce her, ever deepening the feud.
Yet it seems 2010 carried with it a different wind, the anti-incumbency sentiment coupled with the reemergence of the Republican Right created an environment favorable to anti-establishment candidate Joe Miller. With the full support of the Tea Party Express which spent nearly $600,000 in ads endorsing Miller and criticizing Murkowski, the race began to heat up and it became a battle to the end. Seeing the possibility of returning the political 'favor' to Murkowski Sarah Palin jumped into the melee endorsing Joe Miller and campaigning vigorously for him. Even Sarah's normally apolitical husband, Todd Palin, wrote a fundraising letter for Joe Miller. Suddenly even no where was safe for Murkowski and come election day her slight lead had retreated and it seems she knew that anything was possible. A few days later during the counting of the last ballots, Murkowksi claimed she would accept the results no matter what, but that's not exactly what happened. After conceding the race to Joe Miller, Murkowski then went deep underground into private talks with close confidants and rumors swirled like vultures that she was planning a write-in-campaign as a last resort. A full month after the bitter primary and after being turned down by the Alaskan Libertarian Party, Murkowski emerged from her seclusion and announced that she in fact would continue her campaign to reclaim her Senate seat as a write in candidate.
This announcement didn't sit too well with the political universe. Republicans from Karl Rove (R-TX), to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) publicly denounced Murkowski calling her attempts desperate and feeble. McConnell went so far as to remove her leadership role in the Senate and announced that he had plans to revoke her status as the ranking Republican member of the Senate Energy Commission. The bombshells keep dropping but Murkowski has remained quiet while under siege, seemingly to concentrate all of her energy and ever diminishing political capitol in her long shot campaign. The latest Rasmussen Report poll, reveals that Miller sits at 42% of the vote, Murkowski comes in second with 27%, and Democratic candidate Scott McAdams (D-AK) in last with 25% of the vote. The Tea Party has announced that if the race heats up they will not hesitate to return to Alaska to insure Miller's victory. It also doesn't hurt him that he still has the popular former governor Sarah Palin to back him. This race looks pretty much wrapped up so whats the deal, why is Lisa Murkowski doing this?
Just a Last Few Breaths
Lisa Murkowski has played her last hand in the game of politics, and it revealed much more about her personal integrity than she ever could have intended. Her announcement to seek reelection through a write-in-campaign, at the price of being stripped of all power in the Senate, is a move of desperation, the move of a dying animal clinging helplessly to its last threads of life and power. She showed the American public, and most importantly the voters in Alaska, that she is nothing more than a career politician trying to protect her pay check. Well no longer is the American public willing to sit by and let ineffective politicians have their way in public; instead we cry for accountability and proper representation. Lisa Murkowski will lose her bid, and along with it any respect and credit she may have kept if she had left quietly. My advice to Alaska, voter her out, and vote her out hard. It really couldn't happen to a better person.
Later,
Cody
(Photo: Courtesy of the Associated Press)
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