Voices from the Flats – Sarah Palin’s Revenge
Governor Girl’s Revenge
By Donald Craig Mitchell
For those of us who had a ringside seat in Alaska from which to watch it happen, Sarah Palin’s take-no-prisoners rise from small town mayor to tabloid celebrity who moves through the hard-right circles in which she now travels like the rock star she has become has been wonderful fun. But Sarah belongs to America now and for the past year-and-a-half Alaskans have seen hardly hide nor hair of the woman.
But over the next two months we may be seeing more of her because three weeks ago Sarah endorsed a Fairbanks attorney named Joe Miller who is running in the August 24 Republican primary election against Lisa Murkowski for the seat in the United States Senate that Lisa has held since 2002.
Last month at Wally Hickel’s wake in the ballroom of the Captain Cook Hotel I was introduced to Joe Miller and chatted with him long enough to confirm the street talk that Joe, who seemed a pleasant enough fellow, is a run-of-the-mill, anti-government, pro-life wing-nut of the kind for which Fairbanks, the birthplace of the Alaska Independence Party and the hometown of the first member of the Alaska Libertarian Party to be elected to the Alaska Legislature, is renowned.
But so what if Joe Miller is a wing-nut? Inside the Alaska Republican Party being a wing-nut is a credential worth advertising. And Sarah’s endorsement was a terrific advertisement that instantaneously gave Joe credibility with thousands of right-of-conservative Republican and Independent voters. Sarah’s endorsement also brought Joe to the attention of the Tea Party Express, which two weeks ago endorsed Joe and announced that between now and August 24 it will spend $500,000 to try to get him elected.
In California or New York $500,000 in a statewide election is chump change. But it’s not chump change in Alaska, particularly when only 378,000 Alaskans are eligible to vote in the semi-closed Republican primary election in which, based on the number of votes cast in past Alaska Republican primary elections held in non-presidential election years, only a third of that number will go to the trouble to cast a ballot. For that reason, David Dittman, a respected Alaska pollster who works principally for Republican candidates, now predicts that, thanks to Sarah and the Tea Party Express, Joe Miller has a shot.
How for Lisa Murkowski it could have come to this is a story worth telling.
Since it entered the union in 1959 Alaska has had seven United States Senators. Of the lot, Frank Murkowski, who served from 1981 to 2002, has been the worst. Self-absorbed, abusive to his staff, intellectually incurious, and pathologically incapable of learning from his mistakes, during his twenty-one years in the Senate, Frank accomplished absolutely nothing. But from the neck up Frank looked on TV like a Senator, so he got away with it and most Alaskans thought Frank was a terrific Senator even though they had no idea why they thought that.
In 2002 Frank decided to finish off his political career by retiring from the Senate and running for Governor. That November Frank drubbed Fran Ulmer, his Democratic opponent, by winning 56 percent of the vote. But that was the apogee. Finally having to deal with him at close quarters, within months of his inauguration, Alaskans who for decades had considered Frank their guy realized that they had elected an arrogant mean-spirited fool as their chief executive. Nevertheless, oblivious to public opinion, Frank plodded on and by 2006 when he ignored the polls and ran for reelection Frank, who had been one of the most popular Senators in Alaska history, had become the most reviled Governor in Alaska history.
Frank Murkowski’s self-inflicted descent into ignominy paved the way for the rise of Sarah Palin who in the August 2006 Republican gubernatorial primary election won 51 percent of the vote in an election in which Frank, with 19 percent, finished third. The month after the election only 14 percent of Alaskans polled had a favorable opinion of their soon to be ex-Governor, an approval rating that was 5 percentage points behind that of Ohio Governor Robert Taft who in 2005 had pleaded no contest to four misdemeanor counts of public corruption. That accomplishment allowed Frank to end his political career the least popular Governor in the nation.
While start to finish Frank’s tenure as Governor was a disaster, during that tenure Frank, for the wrong reason, did for Alaska what has turned out to be one right thing.
In December 2002 when he resigned from the Senate and was sworn into office as Governor, Alaska law in effect at the time allowed Governor Murkowski to appoint Senator Murkowski’s replacement.
Who would Frank pick? For the month after the election speculation swirled as the usual suspects in the Alaska Republican Party – most sitting or former members of the Alaska Legislature – elbowed each other for advantage in their pursuit of Frank’s favor.
In the end, their scheming and conniving did them all zero good. Because three weeks after he assumed office, Frank announced that he was appointing his forty-five-year-old daughter, Lisa, to succeed him in the Senate.
In addition to the fun of watching Frank be Frank, the best part of that joke was that Frank’s brazen nepotism saddled the Alaska Republican Party with a Senator who – if she had had to win the seat her father gave to her by standing as a candidate in a Republican primary election – would have been humiliated by the enormity of her defeat.
Because Lisa Murkowski is everything Frank Murkowski is not.
During her eight years in the Senate Lisa has demonstrated that she is what she was when her father appointed her: smart, hard-working, conscientious, courteous to all she meets, and respected by peers on both sides of the aisle. And while, because she is a Republican, she caucuses with yahoos like Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint, by temperament and ideology Lisa Murkowski is a center-right Democrat.
Every hard-right Republican in Alaska understood that when Frank appointed Lisa. But there was nothing any of them could do about it but rail. As the<em> Anchorage Daily News </em>reported the day after Frank announced her appointment: “Alaska’s conservative radio talk shows have been aflame with questions about Lisa taking over the seat.”
As well the talk shows should have been.
The month before Frank appointed her Lisa had been elected to her third term in the Alaska House of Representatives from an Anchorage election district that includes Elmendorf Air Force Base and its surrounding off-base neighborhoods. The district is so rock-ribbed Republican that in the three elections Lisa won the Democrats didn’t bother to field a candidate.
In 1998 Lisa won her seat by defeating an underfunded unknown candidate in the Republican primary election.
In 2000 Lisa was reelected by winning the Republican primary election unopposed.
But 2002 was a different story. During that year’s legislative session Lisa was a member of a bipartisan Fiscal Policy Caucus that developed a plan to address the State’s looming budget shortfall by reinstating the income tax and using revenue from the Alaska Permanent Fund to finance state government. And if for conservative Republicans that was not heresy enough, her signal offense that session was voting against a flagrantly unconstitutional bill that Republican leaders in the House cooked up whose enactment would have prohibited the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services from paying for abortions for indigent women.
When the bill was being debated on the House floor a pro-choice colleague privately advised Lisa that since Tony Knowles, the Democratic Governor, had announced that he would veto the bill if it passed, she should vote yes to placate her constituents. But in a speech prior to the vote, Lisa announced that “I may have a very short-lived political future here. But I’m going to stand up for the Constitution and I’m going to stand up for the women of Alaska and I’m going to vote no.”
That no vote provoked Nancy Dahlstrom, an energetic hard core conservative, to challenge Lisa in the 2002 Republican primary election in which Lisa, by only 57 votes, barely snuck through.
Four months later when her father appointed Lisa to the Senate, Karen Vosburgh, the executive director of Alaska Right to Life, publicly warned Alaska’s new Senator that she had a Hobson’s choice: move off her pro-choice position or face a challenge from a pro-life candidate in the 2004 Republican primary election.
In the 2004 Republican primary election two pro-life challengers ran, Mike Miller, a former president of the Alaska Senate, and Wev Shea, a former United States Attorney. But Mike and Wev had no statewide name recognition and no money to buy any. So Lisa sailed through winning 58 percent of the vote. She then held on to slip by former Alaska Democratic Governor Tony Knowles by 3 percentage points in a general election in which Republicans who disliked her policy views and/or were offended by the nepotism her incumbency represented had no choice but to vote for her in order to avoid being saddled with Tony.
Which is why this time around Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Joe Miller is so interesting.
When John McCain and Sarah lost the 2008 presidential election, Alaska immediately was riven with speculation that Sarah would run against Lisa in 2010. But I didn’t believe it. First, because by then Sarah’s celebrity already had transcended politics (which is why I have a bet out that she doesn’t run for President in 2012). And second, because, as self-absorbed as she is, even Sarah understands that she is temperamentally unsuited for the Senate, where when she was elected to the body even a world-class celebrity like Hillary was required to spend years doing her homework and speaking only when spoken to.
So I took Sarah at her word when she told an interviewer a month after the 2008 presidential election that Lisa’s Senate seat was “not in my sights.” And four months after that I took Meg Stapleton, Sarah’s spokesperson at the time, at her word when Meg reconfirmed in April 2009 that Sarah “has no intention of running for the Senator’s seat in 2010″ because she “thinks the Senator is doing a great job.”
But if in April 2009 Sarah thought Lisa was doing such a great job, why in June 2010 did she endorse Joe Miller?
My theory, and I think it’s a good one, is that there are two reasons.
The first reason is that in April 2009 Sarah did not think Lisa could be beat. But now she does.
In January 2009 David Dittman, the Republican pollster, released a poll which indicated that even though Sarah’s approval rating in Alaska still stood at 60 percent, if she ran against Lisa, Lisa would win 57 percent to 33 percent. And no other challenger could be expected to do as well as Sarah would. While that was a poll of statewide voters, Lisa’s numbers were solid enough to suggest that she would win the Republican primary election. By June 2010 the anti-incumbent mood that has swept the nation and the Tea Party Movement’s success in denying Utah Republican Senator Robert Bennett, a dependably stalwart conservative Republican if ever there has been one, his party’s nomination for a fourth term, and in assisting Sharron Angle to win the Republican Senate nomination in Nevada has changed the dynamic.
The second reason is that Sarah’s decision to endorse Joe Miller wasn’t motivated by new-found anathema for Lisa. It was motivated by long-held anathema for Frank.
In 2002 when she ran for the Alaska Republican Party’s nomination for Lieutenant Governor, Sarah ran a credible statewide campaign, losing in a four-person contest to Loren Leman, a well-known State Senator from Anchorage, by less than 2,000 votes.
Because he thought Sarah had the potential to be a rising new star in the Alaska Republican Party, Frank Murkowski’s campaign manager, Gregg Renkes, a longtime congressional aide who Frank would appoint after the election as his Attorney General, decided to team Sarah up with Alaska Senator Ted Stevens to campaign for Frank in the general election. When combined with the success of the statewide primary campaign she had run on her own, her performance on the road rousing the crowds with Ted gave Sarah enough of a following inside the Alaska Republican Party to be able to work her way after the election onto the list of Republicans from which Frank announced that he would pick his successor.
Since she was only thirty-eight-years-old and the highest public office to which she had been elected was mayor of who’s-ever-heard-of-it Wasilla, Frank put Sarah on his list only as a courtesy. But that’s not how Sarah saw her situation.
In Going Rogue, her ghost-written autohagiography, Sarah modestly purports to having had mixed feelings about making Frank’s list because she “didn’t know if there’d be room for one more maverick on Capitol Hill.” However, more candidly, in the next sentence she admits that “the idea of serving in the Senate where I could contribute on a national level was definitely appealing.”
Of the twenty-six individuals on the list (none of whom was Lisa Murkowski), Frank and Gregg Renkes interviewed eleven, one of whom was Sarah. In Going Rogue Sarah describes her interview. According to Sarah, during the half hour she spent with Frank and Gregg, rather than listening to her views on “resource development so we can grow jobs in Alaska,” Frank “launched into a soliloquy on how tough it was on a family to serve in the Senate.” That, Sarah reminisces in Going Rogue, was when “I knew I wasn’t getting the gig.”
Again according to Going Rogue, when Sarah told Todd how the interview had gone, “We were disappointed . . . for about seven seconds.” But more revealingly, Going Rogue concludes Sarah’s description of the episode as follows:
Soon afterward Governor Murkowski made his big announcement.
He’d chosen the ‘most politically aligned Alaskan to replace him in
the U.S. Senate,’ he said. He then handed what was called the most
coveted government job in the state to his daughter, Lisa, a mom
with two young kids.
No one but Frank Murkowski, Gregg Renkes, and Sarah Palin know what actually was said during Sarah’s interview. But according to my sources, when it was over Frank and Gregg thought Sarah had come across as “immature” and “uninformed,” and that of the individuals they interviewed she had been the least impressive. And another source who was close enough to her at the time to know reports that, rather than having been “disappointed for about seven seconds,” Sarah was furious that Frank had had the temerity to refuse to give her his Senate seat and that four years later she made her decision to run against Frank in the 2006 Republican gubernatorial primary election in no small part in order to settle that score.
Throughout her extraordinary rise to wealth and celebrity Sarah has left road-kill behind her all the way up the line. The most prominent of the dead is Frank Murkowski who, whatever his other failings, treated Sarah better than, in the end, Sarah treated him. While he did not appoint her to the Senate, Frank offered Sarah a cabinet position in his administration. And when Sarah turned the job down because taking it would have required her and Todd and Track and Bristol and Willow and Piper to move to Juneau, Frank appointed Sarah to the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission, the highest paying patronage job in state government and a position for which she was completely unqualified, but which Sarah touted throughout the 2008 presidential campaign as the credential that made her an energy expert.
Given her penchant for carrying grudges and settling scores, if, as her endorsement of Joe Miller signals, Sarah is serious about using Joe as a surrogate to do to Lisa what she did to Frank, for us Sarah watchers the next two months have the potential to be a lot of fun. Will Sarah raise money for Joe, either in Alaska or Outside where the big donors to whom she now has access can be shaken down? Will she campaign for Joe? If Sarah does either, Lisa may be in trouble. If Sarah does both, Lisa may be doomed.
However between now and August 24 Sarah decides to play it, sensing the Zeitgeist and anticipating that a challenge in the Republican primary election would come from a candidate who would come at her from her right, for the past two years Lisa has been trying to rebrand herself.
Last August I motored out to Anchorage’s South High School to attend one of the town hall meetings Lisa held on health care reform. By the time I arrived the auditorium was over-flowing with a standing-room-only crowd at least 500 strong. Mostly white. Mostly over fifty. Mostly Republican. When the meeting began Lisa bounded on stage in a tan pants suit and for the next two hours incited the crowd by transforming what could have been a serious public discussion about a nationally important policy issue into a Tea Party rally during which, to thunderous applause, she repeatedly vowed to fight the Democrats’ attempt to “eliminate the private health insurance industry as we know it” in order to pave the way for the federal government to “run health care.”
Two days later on the street in downtown Anchorage I bumped into a Republican member of the Alaska Legislature who (although that is not his name) I will call Fred. Fred, who is a friend of mine and a friend of Lisa’s, served with Lisa during the four years she served in the Alaska House of Representatives. At the health care town hall meeting I had seen Fred standing on the other side of the auditorium. So I asked him what he thought of Lisa’s performance. In response to my question, Fred shook his head and said that her throw-raw-meat-to-the-crowd demagoguery had been shameful. But with her reelection only a year away he understood why she thought she had to do it.
That for the past year is how Lisa has played it. As recently as last Friday at the weekly Republican luncheon in Fairbanks, according to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner Lisa “railed” against the “overreaching” Obama administration, advocated that Congress repeal the new health care law, and proudly touted her recent failed attempt to persuade the Senate to pass a resolution to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
With Sarah and Joe Miller now hard at her heels, several days ago Lisa began broadcasting her first radio commercials. According to the voice-over:
Lisa fought President Obama’s trillion dollar take-over of health care
and voted to repeal it. And when Obama’s EPA planned a massive
power-grab over our economy, Lisa led the fight to stop them.
Lisa Murkowski. A strong conservative record of fighting for Alaska.
Then Lisa takes over to finish up by lecturing that:
Washington is out of control. The Democrats in charge keep borrowing
and spending, leaving us with a crushing debt that our kids will have to pay.
For Alaska, for our families, we need to keep fighting to lower taxes, to
shrink the size of government, and to push back against the federal
government’s assault on Alaska.
I’m Lisa Murkowski and I approved this message. Because together we
can hold the line and turn the tide.
The next time I see Lisa I intend to ask her if the woman who was a member of the Fiscal Policy Caucus and who told the Alaska House of Representatives that she didn’t care whether she had a “short-lived political future” because she was going to vote her pro-choice conscience could have thought that eight years later that same woman would be attempting to hold onto a seat in the United States Senate to which she never could have been elected on her own by trying to bamboozle right-of-conservative Republican primary election voters into believing that she’s one of them?
I’ll be curious to hear Lisa’s answer. I’ll also be curious to see over the next two months whether, now that she’s thrown in publicly with Joe Miller, Sarah allows Lisa to continue to have the free hand she has had for the past two years to try to reinvent herself.
If she doesn’t, for those of us who miss Sarah, it will be fun to see her back in Alaska and out on the stump.
But as much fun as that would be to watch, my personal hope is that this summer Sarah’s so busy making money giving speeches that she decides to let the Tea Party Express try to get Joe Miller elected on its own. Because if Sarah sits it out and if for the next two months Lisa can stay on message pretending to be the hard-right conservative she’s not, it may be enough to get her through the primary election of a party she should not be a member of.
If she does get through, thanks to Frank, Alaska will continue to be the better for the subterfuge.
*****************************************************
Donald Craig Mitchell is an attorney and historian who lives in Anchorage. He is the author of Sold American: The Story of Alaska Natives and Their Land and Take My Land Take My Life: The Story of Congress’s Historic Settlement of Alaska Native Land Claims, which in 2006 the Alaska Historical Society named as two of the most important books that have been written about Alaska.
I would add to this that Lisa has done her share to provoke Palin by publicly criticizing Palin’s resignation and invention of the health care “death panels”. Plus Murkowski is in some ways the anti-Palin – smart, educated, articulate, and not afraid to work. I’d also add that Miller is a “win-win” for Palin. If Miller wins after Palin’s endorsement, Palin takes credit as a kingmaker and power broker plus she’s had her revenge on Lisa. On the other hand, a Miller loss just proves to her Palin-bots that the Washington elite (of which Murkowski is one) really are all out to get them. The Tea Party thrives on martyrdom. Its why they exist.
I think you’re right–a sad time it is in American politics.
I’ll be the glass half full. If Miller loses, Palin proves that she has no credibility in her home state and suffers the wrath of the leftist media who will revel in it. If Miller wins, McAdams (the Democrat) stands a much better chance of getting the seat than he does against Murkowski.
I like your thinking. Fingers crossed that you’re right.
I guess it just states the obvious to say that Palin and credibility seldom appear in the same sentence or even time zone. I don’t think credibility matters to her base, that the only person in Palin-land to whom credibility matters is Sarah herself. Therefore, you get these pathetic attempts at validation like a photo-op with the demented Margaret Thatcher. Palin is all about being the victim, so she drapes herself in a haze of platitudes and nonsequiturs and then uses any criticism or skepticism as proof to her minions – See? They really are out to get us.
That’s the way I look at it, too, AKM. Two relatively unknown names, with one of them being a wing-nut? I think that gives McAdams a real shot.
yeah.. could work AKM.
yep yep
great write up, great add-on
OT, but marlys, I really enjoyed the Killer Cortez link. DH Happy likes Stephen Stills best, but Neil’s always been my favorite. (I’m a fool for that winter/Canadian music man!)
cooool tcw
)) thx for saying so
ny is one of me favs~ he noted many moons ago that ‘rust never sleeps’, true ’nuff, though i know that karma still sweeps:))
Cortez the Killer is one of my all time favorites. Neil Young live is often a revelation — he does things with the guitar that never seem to make it to recordings, also too.
Provoke?
When did fact-checking become provocation? Sarah was LYING.
wow! That was an exceptional article. I live for the day when $P is no longer a featured player on any stage.
“I live for the day when $P is no longer a featured player on any stage.”
Madame Defarge has the perfect stage for $P.
*knits some booties*
LOL – I’ve been crocheting a blanket. Maybe I should go back to knitting. Maybe we all should.
Madame Defarge, eh?
*adding A Tale of Two Cities to the summer (re)reading stack*
I wield a mean embroidery needle, and am quite an accomplished seamstress if I do say so mayself, but never could grasp teh crochet nor teh knitting. Don’t blame Mama; Mama tried.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Timeless and transcendent, Dagian, Thank you for the reminder.
**shiver**
It was during my reading of ‘A Tale…” that I first took up knitting. Among her other gifts, my mother was a highly skilled knitter, and she taught knitting professionally for a while. So glad I had a mom who taught me to wield a needle, a crochet hook, knitting needles … just wish I’d asked her to teach me the sewing machine. Now I own one, and intend to make up for lost time.
one of my favorite books. and how fitting for our own time.
Quite a history between these two political rivals – it is nice to have all the who, what, why, where, when & how’s.
I question how our government will continue to function when we remain deadlocked (in a non-fillibuster proof senate). With the possiblity of more extreme right Republicans & t-baggers gaining seats from moderate Rep’s – we may as well just shut down the legislative branch and save us a few million dollars in payroll, staffing, and office supplies.
Great post. As the saying goes: “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” And in this department, the
ex-half governor is Julia Child.
Don’t insult the great, erudite, and education Julia Child with the false comparison to Sarah Palin.
I mis-typed, “educated”
BTW, Sarah Palin would also object to the comparison since Julia Child was an Ivy-League educated “elitist” who made fancy-food she couldn’t pronounce and her husband was in the foreign service who worked with people who aren’t one of us.
Me. thinks Todd will be out campaigning for Miller. Todd’s been hiding in the background for too long now. I for one, would like to see more of him because I feel he is Sarah’s Achilles heel.
I would be curious to hear more from Track. I know he’s preoccupied right now, but when his tour is over it would be interesting to find out if he has more class than his parents.
My bet is the $Palins will keep Track suppressed because of his vandalism act a few years ago – it was why he was sent off to “hockey school in Michigan” and subsequently to the Army. If he becomes politcally visible, his story will bubble up.
Oh,Good Grief!!! Please do not advocate for another Alaska Political Dynasty! 3 or 4 of them are enough!!!
Someone tell Track to open a hardware store, or start a Red Lobster!!!!
The half-assed-term Gov of Alaska has more Achilles Heels than a centipede (if they in fact have an Achilles tendon). It is just a matter of enumerating them!
Todd, you mean that Alaska secessionist of the erstwhile Alaska Independent Party? Joe Vogler died too soon.
Excellent synopsis and analysis of what has happened in Alaska politics regarding the Murkowskis and Palin.
As an independent voter, I’m tempted – tempted, but not yet decided – to vote for Miller to see if we can oust Lisa who has been a huge embarrassment of late. The risk, of course, is that Miller might beat McAdams in the general. Not sure I’m willing to take that risk. McAdams is better than Murkowski, Murkowski is far better than Miller.
Let’s hear some thoughts on voting strategy!
I think that voting for the least qualified person any time is a bad idea. You get what you asked for then. If McAdams can’t beat Lisa, then he will still get exposure while he argues legitimate ideas and he has a better chance later winning another seat. If he has to go against Miller, he will be bickering Tea Party tactics (in a cesspool with a fool) and looking stupid, even though he has a better chance of beating the fool pudding.
I think it is way too big of a risk. Something could make McAdams unelectable and then you could wind up with Miller.
Show Palin her opinion doesn’t count in Alaska anymore. The polls show her endorsement is a negative in the lower 48. Hopefully that is true in Alaska too.
Agreeing with the two of you. We need the Best and Brightest any party has to put forward.
I’m with you. If McAdams loses, I’d much rather have the intelligent, hard-working, and personable Murkowski, than Miller, who so far has not shown he has anything more than tired tea party rhetoric to offer.
I would also like for Palin and her supporters to see that she no longer holds sway in her home state. That should send a pretty strong message to anybody in the lower 48 that’s still on the fence about her.
Personally, I think Murkowski is more old-style Republican than “a center-right Democrat.” The Republicans of my youth were fiscally conservative and thought government should stay out of people’s lives as much as possible. It does not surprise me in the least that she would not vote for something that was likely unconstitutional and that would infringe so on someone’s personal rights. I think it was more a matter of basic principle and saving the state a bunch in legal fees than being pro-choice, something Palin’s supporters are not likely to understand.
Big risk, big reward… Miller might take the Valley and the Kenai, and maybe some areas of Fairbanks… but I don’t think AK is ready for a true Teabagger. I would love to see AK have an actual real Democrat in office. Lisa could have stayed true and been fine. But she’s as oily as her Dad now.
Don’t ya hate it when the choice is only the least of two evils been there done that.
The great pretender
Murkowski’s the smart, hard-working, center-right Democrat (with a heart of gold) who votes in lockstep with Jim DeMint simply out of fear of losing her job to a “real” Republican like, say, Joe Miller.
Conscientious? Sounds like the typical right-wing politician who voted to squander the Clinton Surplus on Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, and our unpaid wars, only to abandon the unemployed because of our “crushing debt”.
Subterfuge? What a tremendous hipocryte- I hope she loses!
“Sounds like the typical right-wing politician who voted to squander the Clinton Surplus on Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, and our unpaid wars, only to abandon the unemployed because of our “crushing debt”.”
Never thought of it quite like that, but that sure seems to capture the Big Picture these days, BigPete. Thanks for this tasty morsel to chew on. caw Caw.
Only someone who lived in Alaska would characterize Lisa Murkowski as a center-right Democrat, ROTFLMOA
It seems that AK is always (since reading mudflats and other AK blogs) between a rock and a hard place politically. Lisa appears to be the better choice of republican candidates–but, will she hold steadily anti POTUS should she win the republican primary?
Is there a viable democratic candidate that could win over the Palin pick Miller who would forever be grateful and beholden to Ms. Todd Palin and her maniacal machinations against our duly elected, American born, legal POTUS?
Ms. Todd Palin, vindictively immature as I’m sure Lisa and her father know by now.
I wonder what King Solomon (Old Testament) would do in this rock/hardplace AK situation? Maybe Sarah knows. With her servant’s heart and putting Alaaaska first, she’ll do what’s best for her own Heath-Palin self.
Lord have mercy on y’all and all the other 49 of us.
Amen Dowl amen.
It’s tough–I think Scott McAdams is an energetic, hard-working, enthusiastic candidate and I’d love to see him have a chance. However, Palin not being able to get Miller elected in Alaska would just be so sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet!!!!
More popcorn, please!
I will be a broken record for the next few months–anyone who encourages folks to attack Lisa so that Joe Miller wins the primary better donate A BIG CHUNK ‘O CHANGE to Scott McAdams. Joe Miller would be a total disaster for Alaska!
*passing the popcorn*
Agreed. Anyone who goes “Operation Chaos” needs to pony up and toss some $$$ at Scott McAdams.
” … during his twenty-one years in the Senate, Frank accomplished absolutely nothing. But from the neck up Frank looked on TV like a Senator, so he got away with it and most Alaskans thought Frank was a terrific Senator even though they had no idea why they thought that.”
That’s such a depressing description that I can’t share the author’s enthusiasm on how much “fun” this Senate election will be to watch. Ignorant voters and petty politics of revenge….not my idea of fun.
Otherwise, interesting post.
As a friend of mine always said……”That frog-face and his bug-eyed daughter”"…Just a quote…..
EXCELLENT informative post. Thanks to Mr. Mitchell & AKM et al for posting.
I really enjoyed that article, AKM. I think we need to get Paddy Power, the Irish bookie, on this one!
First, whew! That is quite a story. Thanks for those details which make it easier to understand why Lisa Murkowski is towing such a conservative line and it also points out the degree to which Sarah Heath Palin is a vindictive ___ (fill in the blank; I won’t type the word(s). I don’t know which way to hope it goes. Do you really think Sarah has enough positive regard left to help sway Miller’s election? I have been hoping that support for her in AK is virtually gone. I do wish that your Democrat candidate would have a fighting chance in the general election. Second, yes, I now think it would be wise to expose Todd a little more. I too think there is vulnerability there.
I, for one, will not vote for either one of them (not Lisa and not Joe).
The things that Lisa has done in the last year (whether for political expedience or not) have been unforgiveable. Yes, she is smart and she works hard (much more than can be said for saintsarah). However, she cannot be trusted and she has proven it over and over in the last year. Resorting to throwing the red meat to the ignorant masses, crawling into bed with all of the red (or orange)-faced white guys in the Republican party, walking lock-step with their obstructionist agenda so that she can be their token female in the back of all of the pictures, outright refusing to acknowledge or intelligently discuss any differences of opinion regarding health care or clean air and climate change makes her very undesirable IMHO. (Wow, that sentence almost goes on for way too long). The fact that she is a woman and that she voted pro-choice (a factor very near and dear to my heart) might have made a difference to me once upon a time. Since Sarah (and in fact PO), I am now officially gender and color blind to my politicians.
I voted for our President, not because of his race, but because I felt that he was the one person who could inspire us to try to do better in this world. I felt that he was calm and intelligent in the face of many storms and that, with the wreck that he was handed, he would give us all the hope and inspiration that we so desperately needed in order to come in from the desert that was 8 years under shrub. I hope that it is not more than one man can handle. As impatient as I have been with many of his policies, and as much as I long to see what an intelligent female president could do, I know that if he has done nothing else, he has restored some of our dignity in the world.
Lisa, on the other hand, has been an embarrassment to women (at least those of us who are progressive). Perhaps not as great of an embarrassment as SP (who could anyone possibly be a greater one?) but she has blathered on and sucked up and taken the low road IMO. I can still remember her being interviewed after the Convention about the “sarah Factor” (puke). She jumped on that bandwagon and now she is being thrown under the bus. Boohoo.
I am assuming that the person who wrote this thread is a Republican (or at least a conservative). I disagree with him, re-branding or not, she is most definitely a member of the Republican party and no other.
Swinging around to try to fight the Teabaggers by caving in to their crazy crap and respewing it in order to get re-elected is dishonest at best. We need people with brains and real ideas who can help to guide this nation through the storm (and that means working with the other side to get s*it done), not lackeys who pander to the latest populist, Faux informed (or misinformed) “idills” of the idiots.
God help us if too many of these people get elected (or re-elected).
Well and truly said. I agree with everything you’ve said. Thank you for voicing these points so clearly.
My sentiments, exactly. I used to give Lisa Murkowski a bit of credit, as she is obviously a lot smarter than her father, and I THOUGHT she was less rabidly conservative. But the last year or so, she has proven that she is just as unprincipled as he was. Her antics lately show how completely shameless she is in her pursuit of the right-wing nutjob vote.
i concur.
“she cannot be trusted and she has proven it over and over in the last year. Resorting to throwing the red meat to the ignorant masses, crawling into bed with all of the red (or orange)-faced white guys in the Republican party, walking lock-step with their obstructionist agenda so that she can be their token female in the back of all of the pictures, outright refusing to acknowledge or intelligently discuss any differences of opinion regarding health care or clean air and climate change makes her very undesirable IMHO.”
“…has been an embarrassment to women (at least those of us who are progressive). Perhaps not as great of an embarrassment as but she has blathered on and sucked up and taken the low road IMO.”
Plug in the name “Sarah Palin” and all the above descriptors and statements apply equally, so your point is?
At least Lisa Murkowski can walk and talk at the same time, won’t stare blankly at Katie Couric and then blame Katie or the McCain campaign, and supports women’s rights.
My point is that Lisa may be a few steps above SP on the evolutionary ladder but she still does not represent my interests. And it is only a hop, skilp and a jump for her to stop supporting women’s rights if she thinks it will buy her an election and/or another cushy committee seat.
Andrew Halcro is taking on Miller at his website. A question he asked today was interesting and begs to be answered:
Why was Joe Miller fired from his job as Attorney for the Fairbanks North Star Borrough?
No commentary, but interesting. I’m guessing that Halcro probably does know the answer and is saving it for an entry to his website for another day.
I bet that both Todd and Sarah are out on the campaign trail for Miller. It would be mud on their faces their nominee can’t get elected in their home state and we all know how much the Palins would hate that.
Ah yes, republicans eating themselves alive.
Sounds harsh, but it is what seems the norm for a decade or so…
Anyway, if Scarah shows herself to Alaska, in public, think of the usual negative backlash?
Lisa will slide on by. Scarah taints EVERYTHING.
IMO anyway.
Do you remember the Republican storm of criticism for Hillary calling herself “Hillary Rodham” instead of using her husband’s name? It was so intense that Hillary changed, and now calls herself “Hillary Clinton.”
Have you ever, ever, ever heard a Republican criticize Lisa for calling herself “Lisa Murkowski” instead of using her husband’s name?
Thought not.
What is a Rodham? No one knows. Whatever is up with her and Bill’s marriage, they are a great team and she seems to have more power as a Clinton.
Lisa using her husband’s name would mean nothing to anyone, but it’s like the Clinton name– it is powerful.
LoveMydogs, loved your post.
This is a little off topic, but there will be another Mudstock in Dublin this weekend!! Alabama and Dublin meet. Thanks AKM for the the opportunity to meet all these people.
Y’all have fun, y’hear?
(in my best southern drawl, so hear has at least two syllables)
Mind yerselves!
uh huh.
Didnt know where to put this, so here.
BristolBay Gold ops to begin.
http://www.resourceinvestor.com/News/2010/6/Pages/Sizing-Up-the-Worlds-Mega-CopperGold-Projects.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+resourceinvestornews+%28Resource+Investor%29
Oyu Tolgoi is not the largest deposit in development. That honor goes to the Pebble project which is equally owned by Northern Dynasty Minerals [TSX:NDM | NYSE.A: NAk] and Anglo American [LSE:AAL | NASQ:AAUK]. However, Oyu Tolgoi is vastly richer.
Donald C. Mitchell is one of Alaska’s premier Sarah Watchers. He knows the game, he has an institutional memory rivaling that of Wally Hickel and Ted Stevens.
I truly wish those in the know, including Frank and the equally disgraced Greg Renkes would share their findings in Sarah’s immature Senate hopeful interview. Again, that she thought she had a chance in hell. . .
The old white GOP boys will make sure Sean Parnell sails into his own term without effort or any merit, but they’ll give Lisa the fight of her political life. I shake my head too at her raw meat rebranding, but understand that’s the way it is in Red Alaska. It doesn’t make it right, but if we want a “Center Right Democrat” (at least after the first year she has to make the Tea Party folks comfortable, then she can relax her vitriol in her remaining five years before another run) we need to keep Lisa.
Miller. What a joke. I hope that the Tea Party’s strategy of a great bus tour across the State is as brilliant as they get. We only have so much ‘interstate.’ LOL.
Thanks Don, for contributing more background on the powers that be, and for what essentially set Sarah on the rest of the country.
I am so sick of the “that’s the way it has to be in Red Alaska”. Your words are fact. I still hate it.
{{{{{LoveMydogs}}}}}
Life is much the same here on the redneck Riviera…but Blue is pushing back…not quite Purple, but I think I can see it from my house. I think I can. I think I can.
WHAT? What has Sean done besides not be SP 1.0? Can he really win? Will people really vote for him?
Interesting back story. I don’t really want to wish this on Alaska, but I think I am not alone if feeling that having Sarah spend the summer in Alaska stumping and making walrus sausage for her kids would be nice.
Please! She was just in TX and we don’t need her here. (She isn’t as popular here as she and people think.). Keep her in Alaska, please.
Hmmmm…..something tells me that Lisa is not afraid of Sarah as people may suspect. Could it be because ole Lisa may know some of Sarah’s secrets? Like a certain Babystory? We’ll see.
Do you think she’d have confided in Frank or Lisa about from where Tri-G REALLY came from?
Speaking of ‘out on the stump” — why is the Quitter not stumping for her lackey Yawn Parnell??
Why has Palin not endorsed Parnell??
Is it because she is TOXIC in Alaska and Parnell wants to disassociate himself from his ‘mentor’?
Why isn’t anyone raising this question???
Excellent article. Explains a LOT. Every Alaska should read it, no matter what party they belong to. Thank you Mr. Mitchell.
Excellent and informative history. Thanks, it really pulled some of the confusing pieces into perspective for me.
“Self-absorbed, abusive to his staff, intellectually incurious, and pathologically incapable of learning from his mistakes, during his twenty-one years in the Senate, Frank accomplished absolutely nothing.”
* * * * *
Hmmmm, let’s make a few minor changes…
Self-absorbed, abusive to HER staff, intellectually incurious, and pathologically incapable of learning from HER mistakes, during HER year and a half as GOVERNOR, SARAH accomplished absolutely nothing.
Pretty darn accurate, wouldn’t ya say????
Excellent article! I don’t like Lisa and will not vote for her. I’ve not approved of the stands she has taken in Congress nor the fact she is being funded largely by the oil companies.
Is there any politician from Alaska that is honest? I have my doubts!
You nailed it BigPete. Thanks for putting my thoughts into words. Lisa is a reborn fiscal conservative now that Dems are in power but after her party put the nation in such grievous debt it will be hard to ever emerge. She has been voting in lockstep with Mitch McCollum’s every ugly bowel movement and has lost any credibility or shred of integrity she may have once possessed. Tough time to be a rising star in a party of obstructionists hell bent on destroying the Obama presidency even if it means taking America down with it.
I’m no flyinureye, but I thought I would try my hand at a little photoshopping fun. (Featuring the Queen who doesn’t believe in facts.)
Whoops, looks like the link didn’t come in very clear. Click on ‘fun’ to see.
Very cute! Made me giggle.
Nicely done! Hope to see more of your work!
Thanks! This is what happens when you have a spare hour, an active imagination and Photoshop.
Or as Sarah would probably say in response to this, “Idle hands are the Devil’s tools”… lol.
I really tried to give Murkowski the benefit of doubt but after the past couple of years, she’s proven to be a crook and a sell out to the petro industry.
However I can’t see the half-term, half-twit, quitter having have any influence on any election.
It’s very helpful to those of us who are not from Alaska to have such detailed information about Palin and Murkowski. I hadn’t realized that Lisa had changed so much because I’d never paid any attention to her before 2008, to be honest.
Thanks for the excellent article, and best of luck to all those in Alaska. I think you’ll need it.
Hmmm, the idea that Sarah might actually spend most of her summer in Alaska instead of invading all the other states does have a certain appeal. We all need a break from her.
As I’ve written before, Lisa will sometime be the subject of a fascinating thesis paper or even a morality play. In the state legislature, she was one of the most rare birds in Alaska, a thinking, moderate Republican who was respected on both sides on the aisle. In short, she was the antithesis of her dad. Since her district was much more conservative than she was, it was always a wonder how she stayed in office. It was possible her ride was about over when her dad called with the offer of a free US Senate seat. Charges of nepotism be damned, there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it. The seat was more safe than Fort Knox – I mean even Frank was able to hold on to it. ….. And then the impossible happened. Not only did the all-powerful Republicans lose control of the Presidency and both houses, Ted Stevens lost to Mark Begich, albeit only after becoming a convicted felon and still only losing by a couple percentage points. Without Uncle Ted there to steer pork to Alaska, Lisa suddenly found herself the senior senator of a tiny state in the minority caucus, not the best spot to grab pork for her voracious constituents. What is a nice, intelligent, moderate girl to do? The answer was to re-invent herself as a true conservative and a loyal soldier for the right wingnut brigade that goes by the name of the Republican Party in Congress. But once you are in for a penny, you are in for a pound. Her silly right-wing posturing disenchanted what was left of her moderate base and completely alienated any supporters she had on the left. So what is left? ….. the Teabaggers. The trouble is that the Teabaggers’ only program is to attack. They have no constructive positions. Lisa was happy to whip up the Teabaggers with corrupt rhetoric about health care and taxes. But now, she is learning what we all expected … the Teabaggers have turned on her, too. So now who is left for poor, little, intelligent moderate Lisa after she’s spent months pandering to the wingnuts and kicking the progressives in the teeth? And like all great tragedies, this one was written in fate as soon as she said yes to her dad – sure, I’ll take that Senate seat. I mean, what could go wrong?
Pat – the problem is that Sarah has invaded the Washington State Senate race to endorse Clint Didier. Didier is such a teabagging wing-nut that he has managed to make anti-abortionist, budget cutting, tax cutting Dino Rossi liberal. Whadda ya say to that?
Sarah needs to go to fish camp for the summer, cut off her smartphone and STF for the good of the country.
what is sad and yet amazing to me is that while republican presidents
signed off on what amounts to 90% of the total national debt, not
one republican ever stood up and said that to do so was wrong.
nope, republicans have and always will campaign on their faux
platform of smaller government and less spending.
and yet here we are, dick cheny said “raygun proved that the
deficit doesn’t matter”.
now we have republicans trying to rewrite history once again
and blame the guy that comes along after the mess was created and
is trying to keep our country’s head above water.
republicans had no problem spending above and beyond our means
as long as they and their friends profit from such spending.
i have wondered and will forever ask, what was that first
lie that republicans told to themselves that enabled the telling
of all the rest of the lies to us to become so easy??
until we as a country stop telling lies and live
within our means and stop extending ourselves overseas to the
detriment of those here at home, we will continue to slowly
sink into that quagmire of despairing desperate decline we
loath yet seemingly embrace as we cant quite seem to pull our heads
out of that hole in the ground.
Thanks for the interesting article. As ever, Alaskan politics are nothing if not interesting.
AKM, Can you remove me from the roster that lets me comment? It is time that I stop reading about the Palins and Alaska politics. As much as I have learned from Y’All it is time to pull my feet from the muck. I’m going cold turkey. Wish me luck!
nope…you will return…you won’t be able to stop yourself…you will sense the pups a yippin’ and a yappin’ and you will be forced to join in,,,,,see you soon Fly.
AKM, two quick points:
(1) in calling Frank Murkowski the worst US Senator from Alaska ever, you do a grave disservice. You’ve forgotten Mike Gravel, the person Frank replaced. He had all of Frank’s problems and none of his positives.
(2) Joe Miller is a weak reed on which to base a campaign. See today’s entry and link at Andrew Halcro’s blog.
Tomorrow’s nightless day merges into darkless night.
And who knows what Joe Miller will have to say about Lisa. Heck he could probably win the votes of most of Prince of Wales Island and take the vote in Juneau and Tenakee if he says the magic words…
“I think Murkow’s pandering to Sealaska Regional Corporation disqualifies her from representing Alaska when she plans on giving them 133 square miles of the most beautiful rain forest in the world so they can chop off every tree and leave hill and dale a sea of stump.”
If Joe does that, it will indicate he has the fighting spirit. For Murkow’s pander is like no other. It defies self interest even golly gee. No one in DC, not even her own staff, knows what dark deep Sealaska might have on Murkow. Murky business this.
She sure does not want S 881 to see the light of day. Even the Juneau Empire today refused to print it
All politicians are trying to further their career, what do you think Sarah is doing.
Joe Miller – who thinks that Lisa is a bad person because she supports hate crime legislation. Hate crimes against all religions, gays, races, etc. I love how you greenies are attacking Natives as part of your pushback on S. 881
Joe Miller, who thinks climate science is wrong – I thought greenies were believers in the greenhouse effect.
Joe Miller, who thinks that unnecessary government services should be abolished, like the US Forest Service regulation of the Tongass National Forest – who is going to watch your precious Southeast Alaska for you?