In the wake of Tuesday’s primary in Alaska, the “lamestream media,” as Sarah Palin calls them, has been crediting Palin and a tea party group with driving the surge in support for GOP underdog candidate Joe Miller in his race against incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
What Beltway pundits do not mention, however, is that the tea party group that ran ads against Murkowski has been in the news this summer because of its racist activities — nor do they mention that the group may have financial ties to Palin, who has been engaged in a junior-high school level feud with the Murkowski family for years. Via OpenSecrets.org:
The Alaska Republican primary is a nail-biter between attorney Joe Miller and incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Miller is currently leading by about 1,660 votes, with still over 7,000 absentee ballots to be counted in the coming weeks.
A poll in mid-July by Alaska’s Ivan Moore showed that among likely Republican voters, Murkowski was favored over Miller 61.8 percent to 29.6 percent statewide. How did Miller make such a comeback?
One thing is for sure, Miller benefited from the financial support of the Our Country Deserves Better PAC. The group, also known as the Tea Party Express, first started to support Miller on July 12 and subsequently spent $550,000 running independent expenditures in favor of him, according to a Center for Responsive Politics review of recent filings with the Federal Election Commission.
It’s hard to keep straight who’s who among all the tea bagger entities, but Tea Party Express is the group that ran the tea party bus tour rallies, including the one this year that featured a sparsely attended speech by Palin on the Boston Commons, for which we assume she received her usual $100,000 fee.
TPE — which is astroturfed by Republican Party PR consultants, Russo Marsh & Rogers — is best known for its former chairman, Mark Williams, the right-wing racist radio host who wrote the infamous “Colored People” letter attacking the NAACP.
The letter hit so close to home among other tea bagger groups that their governing body, Tea Party Federation, expelled Tea Party Express, on Saturday, July 17 — just five days after TPE started donating to Joe Miller in Alaska. (Palin endorsed Miller on June 2.)
Williams, who lives in Sacramento, subsequently resigned from TPE, saying he planned to work full time on stopping the Park 51 Islamic center from being built one block west of New York City Hall.
Beltway pundits have also ignored the role the Palin-Murkowski family feud played in the race, according to Sarah Jones at PoliticusUSA.com:
Sarah Palin is still seething mad that Lisa’s father gave Lisa the Senate seat that Palin felt entitled to, and it doesn’t matter who or what it costs, Palin will make Murkowski pay. Sprinkle some other petty feud dust on this one, courtesy of Sarah Palin, and call it a day. But, also, too, my question to Joe Miller would be, “Does a Sarah Palin endorsement mean that you, too, view this job as one you can abandon when the going gets tough?”
Another rarely mentioned fact is that there was an initiative on the ballot Tuesday on the abortion-related issue of parental consent. As Rachel Maddow reported last night, on Joe Miller’s campaign website, under “Values,” Miller lists just one item: “Life must be protected from the moment of conception.” In other words, as Maddow put it, “He wants to make it illegal for a woman to have an abortion in any circumstances even if her pregnancy results from being raped or from incest.”
Experts on Alaska politics suggest that this extremist position on abortion may have helped him with hard-core Republican primary voters who are suspicious of Sen. Murkowski’s views on abortion, despite her 0 percent rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America.
I’m anxiously waiting for the absentee ballot count. In a way, I think Murkowski brought her woes on herself. I think she should not have always voted in lockstep with her party, and I think her bill to limit oil companies’ liability when the Gulf environmental disaster was in full bloom hurt her. The environmental damage from the Exxon Valdez spill is ongoing, and those impacted by the spill weren’t really properly compensated for their losses. She could just be another Martha Coakley, thought she had it in the bag and got lazy.
I follow Andrew Halcro’s blog. Halcro is a strong Murkowsi supporter and an Alaskan blogger. He says the fact that Miller went for the jugular during the primary campaign, and Murkowsi didn’t respond in a like manner, is the reason he thinks Murkowski is in her present predicament. Also, the idea of her running as an independent has been floated, but it remains to be seen how serious she is about keeping her seat in the Senate. She’d have to break away from her family’s political party. The same party in which she is also a member. Her dad appointed her to the seat. Should be fun.