Can someone please find a fat lady in Alaska?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Go away, Joe Miller. You lost.

And quasi-Republican Lisa Murkowski, the "write-in" incumbent to whom you lost, has voted admirably well during this period of lame-duckery.

(By the way, I have nothing against fat ladies. I'm not a sizeist. But you know the saying.)

Elephant Dung #1: Murkowski says Palin lacks "leadership qualities," "intellectual curiosity" to be president

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Allow me to introduce a new series here at The Reaction: Elephant Dung.

Basically, it is our view -- and we are certainly not alone in holding it -- that the emergence of the Tea Party, the clear co-opting of the Tea Party by the Republican Party (and vice versa), and the victories of right-wing extremists (Tea Party or otherwise) both in the Republican primaries and in the recent midterm elections will lead to a civil war, of sorts, within the party. The Tea Party has tasted power and will want more of it, that is, will want to control the party, while what passes for the party establishment, however conservative in its own right, will push back against any such coup. Already, we have seen many signs of this, and it will continue.

The Republican Party currently embraces an opportunistic combination of neoconservatism on foreign policy, theocratism on social policy, and libertarianism on economic policy. This, too, cannot hold, though what truly defines Republicans is their relentless pursuit of power. And it is this pursuit of power, with Republicans now in control of the House and smelling blood, that could prove to be their undoing over the next two years.

We intend to track this GOP Civil War by highlighting instances of Republicans coming undone by going after each other, by turning their sights on their own kind and ultimately tearing each other apart.

We have chosen the title "Elephant Dung." This is not to malign elephants, which are noble, wise, and dignified creatures. (Republicans do not deserve them as their mascot.) Nor is it even to malign their excrement, which can be turned into environmentally-friendly paper. Rather, the dung is the waste that elephants cannot use, and yet all Republicans seem to be contributing these days is dung: bad ideas and bad policies, fear and anger, bitterness and resentment, ignorance and bigotry. If they would stop heaping piles of dung upon the country, and upon the world beyond, perhaps they could find themselves once again included in mature and productive political discussion. But they show no signs of doing that anytime soon. Indeed, it only looks to get worse now that they've tasted power once again.

Watch here for new entries in the series. There will no doubt be many of them.

Let us begin.

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As the soon-to-be-declared-re-elected Murkowski told Katie Couric yesterday:

"You know, she was my governor for two years, for just about two years there, and I don't think that she enjoyed governing," Murkowski said. "I don't think she liked to get down into the policy." The Alaska senator added that she prefers a candidate who "goes to bed at night and wakes up in the morning thinking about how we're going to deal with" important issues.

Obviously, there's no love lost between the two women, not with Tea Party Palin backing Teabagger Joe Miller for the Republican nomination earlier this year, but this clearly isn't bitterness.

Rather, it's an honest, if also extremely tame, assessment of someone Murkowski knows well.

I continue to believe that Palin will not run for president:

Sure, she might run, and she could be talked into it, not least if the sycophants who inhabit her little bubble appeal to her massive ego and delusional belief that she's divinely qualified to be president, but I really do think she has too much to lose and that it's better for her, and her quest for ever more fame and fortune, to remain a sort of celebrity kingmaker within the Republican Party. A loss to Obama, before which she'd be placed under a high-powered microscope, could effectively ruin her plans.

And if she does? Well, she's deeply unpopular with the American people and with the more reasonable parts of the GOP.

As Distributorcap put it recently, to those of us who live in reality (and this includes those Republicans who are thinking clearly about their '12 prospects), she's "a reality show star who lost the 2008 VP election, quit her elected job as governor for financial gain, and cannot name one Supreme Court case." She's "the political world's Zsa Zsa Gabor -- famous for being famous."

Murkowski, I would say, was being extremely nice.

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Oh, and as for the Murkowski-Miller race? As The Hill is reporting, Murkowski has been welcomed back to the Senate by her fellow Republicans. How will this go over with the Tea Party -- and with extremists like Jim DeMint?

(That is, when DeMint is finished beating up Mitch McConnell on earmarks. This is a big victory for the right, but just wait until Republicans realize that earmarks make them popular back home.)

Yup, grab the popcorn!

Things are looking good for Murkowski

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Anchorage Daily News is reporting that incumbent Lisa Murkowski is getting almost all of the write-in votes in Alaska's Senate election -- about 98 percent.

As Nate Silver explains, Republican Teabagger Joe Miller needs 11.6 percent of the almost 93,000 write-in votes to be "something other than legal ballots cast for Lisa Murkowski." Given the results so far, he has "little chance of achieving that 11.6 percent threshold":

According to reporting by the Anchorage Daily News:

• About 0.9 percent of the write-in ballots were legal votes deemed to be cast for someone other than Lisa Murkowski.
• Another 1.4 percent of write-in ballots, which appeared to be votes for Ms. Murkowski, were successfully challenged by Mr. Miller’s campaign.
• Another 8.5 percent of write-in ballots were unsuccessfully challenged by Mr. Miller's campaign and counted for Ms. Murkowski.

Together, these three categories add up to 10.8 percent: below the 11.6 percent threshold. If the first day of ballot-counting is representative of what will take place during the next four days, Ms. Murkowski would eventually be declared the winner by about 750 votes -- even if all of Joe Miller's challenges were eventually upheld in court.

Which is good news, right? Well, let us not forget that Murkowski is still a Republican even if she lost the primary vote to Miller. While her relationship with the party is somewhat unclear, it's highly likely that she'll be welcomed back with open arms, not least because Miller proved to be such a lousy candidate, not to mention an extremist thug even by Republicans standards, and many of the more establishment-minded Republicans of the sort who inhabit Capitol Hill flocked to Murkowski instead.

But is she preferable to Miller? Sure. And would her victory be a blow to Sarah Palin and the Tea Party? Yes, absolutely.

So there you go.

In Alaska, Republicans abandon Teabagger Miller and embrace Incumbent Murkowski, Democrats see opening for McAdams

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I think it's quite hilarious that Republicans are now trying to distance themselves from Joe Miller, and, as ABC News' Jonathan Karl reports, "banking on a victory by write-in candidate Lisa Murkowski as the best bet for Republicans to keep the Alaska Senate seat.

What's so hilarious? Miller is the Republican candidate, having defeated the incumbent Murkowski earlier this year to much fanfare on the right. And now Republicans are bailing?

Sure, Miller, running a brutal campaign (and being, from what I can tell, a brutal thug), may very well be a lost cause, as even Sarah Palin has suggested, but, if anything, Republicans are just reaping what they have sown. Karl:

Murkowski defied party leaders by running a write-in campaign after she lost the Republican primary last month. But with Miller's campaign faltering, the source tells me that Republican leaders are now worried that Democrat Scott McAdams has a shot of winning and that Murkowski may be the only way to stop him.

It's a remarkable turnaround for Murkowski. She was punished by party leaders last month -- unceremoniously stripped of her post in the Senate leadership -- when she refused to bow out of the Senate race and endorse Miller. But she has consistently said she is still a Republican and will caucus with the Republican party if she wins.

The nightmare scenario for Republicans is that McAdams comes in second on Election Day, trailing "write-in candidate." Those write-in votes won't be counted unless there are more write-in votes than there are votes for any candidate on the ballot. Once the write-in votes are counted, however, some of them will inevitably be disqualified (illegible writing, wrong name, etc.). And a small number will be for candidates other than Murkowski. If enough are tossed out, second place McAdams would be the winner.

Murkowski lost the primary largely because the Tea Party, with Palin perhaps its #1 cheerleader, took over the GOP (or vice versa -- they're now pretty much the same, particularly at the "base" level). And now the Democrats do see an opportunity to pull out a surprise victory in a race that, had Murkowski been the GOP nominee, the Republicans surely would have won. (No wonder the Breitbart Right is resorting to lies and smears in the last few days of the campaign.)

If I were Lisa Murkowski, I'd tell the Republican Party to fuck off. But, of course, I'm not Lisa Murkowski.

Rand Paul: Head-stomping and the tyranny of virtue

By R.K. Barry

The tyranny of virtue is a concept usually associated with the behaviour of certain figures in the French Revolution who were so convinced of the moral rectitude of their mission that they could justify any atrocity in its defence -- hence The Terror, and its most effective tool, the guillotine. 

The violence that we have seen exacted on political opponents from associates of Republican Senate nominees Rand Paul (Kentucky) and Joe Miller (Alaska) may not be prelude to a bloodbath, but it is very disturbing.

Absolute certainty has always frightened me. It doesn't mean I'm not principled; I'd like to think I am. It's only that I'm open to the possibility that I could be wrong about certain things or, more gently put, my perspective could be improved by new information or the force of a better argument.

I'm just not seeing a lot of openness on the part of conservatives that they might occasionally be wrong or that, if evidence were provided, they could modify their views. 

In fact, they don't seem much interested at all in rational argumentation or providing reasons for the opinions they hold. What seems to motivate them instead is the strongly held belief in the moral rectitude of their mission -- a mission that is mostly about embracing a set of values that are impervious to reason. It's about constructing a world in which they would feel more comfortable -- as unconnected to reality as that might be. As we know, it's about "taking their country back." 

I am reminded of the infamous comment made by Indiana state senator Earl Fredrick Landgrebe, who, in defence of Richard Nixon during the Watergate hearings, said, "Don't confuse me with the facts."

What we are living through in America today is most emphatically not about the facts. 

Sam Tanenhaus, in his book The Death of Conservatism, makes the by-now-familiar argument that conservatives feel that their "culture has been taken away from them, that America has been robbed of its values by liberals or they would say socialists like Barack Obama."

It's a politics of resentment, anger and revenge... We're seeing a politics of vengeance now from the right. When Rush Limbaugh said he wanted Barack Obama to fail, he was not just spitting out a provocative line, he was actually handing out a kind of marching orders to the right, which they now seem to be following.

As in the French Revolution, it is the need to punish enemies and traitors that leads to the tyranny of virtue. It is the view that there are those who are right and those who are wrong and heads are going to have to roll to protect the purity of the message. There can be no middle ground.

So we are left with a pretty odd dynamic: progressives want to talk policy, while conservatives want to crush, quite literally, progressives.

When it is pointed out that Republican Senate nominees Christine O'Donnell and Sharon Angle, along with Sarah Palin (among others), are after all not very bright, conservatives come close to responding by saying, "what's your point?" For conservative true believers, it's not about how much their standard bearers know or how well they debate; it's about the values they represent.

This is not about policy discussions or building consensus or having solid facts or making good arguments. This is about being right. And when you think you're right, and are unshakable in that faith, there is no space left to engage the other side who probably only want to confuse you with the facts in an attempt to move you off your version of the truth.

Politics at its best is about negotiation and compromise, but you cannot negotiate with those who believe they are completely right and you are completely wrong. Witness the wholesale rejection by Republicans of Obama's legislative agenda, and the willingness of conservative voters to reject Republican politicians who can be shown to have supported any small part it.

The current conservative dynamic is not about politics at all; it is about absolute moral certainty. In its mildest form, it is the kind of certainty that leads to a poorly functioning political system. In its most extreme form, it leads to Republican supporters and campaign workers in places like Kentucky and Alaska resorting to violence to thwart those who threaten their crusade, however these Republicans define it.

It would have been better if Democrats had figured this out a while ago.

In any case, Robespierre would be proud.

I still don't think Sarah Palin will run for president in '12

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Alaska blogger Jeanne "Mudflats" Devon has obtained "internal emails" that, in her view, "provide the most conclusive evidence to date that Palin will be running for president." Specifically, a September e-mail from Todd Palin to Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller, SarahPAC Treasurer Tim Crawford, and Palin and Miller attorney Thomas Van Flein states that Sarah's earlier endorsement of Miller for Republican nominee (over incumbent Lisa Murkowski) shouldn't be "one sided," meaning that if she endorses him, which she did, he should endorse her. The problem is that he didn't reciprocate, instead saying, in an interview with Fox News's Neil Cavuto, that there are "a number of great candidates out there" (and dodging the question of whether Sarah is qualified to be president). This roused Todd's ire and indignation. In the e-mail, he tells Crawford to "old off on any letter of support for Joe."

I must say, this seems like much ado about not very much. While it's true that Todd seems to have wanted an endorsement of sorts from Miller, it's not clear that any endorsement -- and it's far too early for endorsements to mean anything anyway -- would have needed to have been formal. Perhaps it would have been fine if Miller had just praised Palin personally, setting her apart from the possible Republican field, instead of lumping her in with the other "great candidates" (if in fact he things she's one of them).

What we see here, once again, is that the Palins -- Todd as well as Sarah, are driven largely by pettiness and a sense of being disrespected, so utterly insecure do they seem to be (hence their constant attacks on "elites").

Is there really any indication here that Sarah is planning on running for president? Maybe, but it really doesn't appear to be at all definitive, if it's there at all. There's certainly no "strong evidence," as Devon says there is. After all, would the Palins really have wanted a "quid pro quo endorsement" from Miller at that time, so early in the game? Likely not, as any such endorsement would have been awkward and forced Sarah to address her future plans, which she has thus far been unwilling to do except through vague, non-committal comments. And were they really that "furious" with Miller that he didn't provide one? Again, all they may have wanted was a statement like, "I think Sarah Palin would make a great president." And, indeed, what Todd says specifically in the e-mail is that Sarah "put her ass on the line" with her endorsement and that Miller should have been able to "answer a simple question" -- is Sarah qualified? -- in the affirmative.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I don't think she'll run -- for a variety of reasons, including that she'd lose and that much of her highly profitable appeal would burst. Sure, she might run, and she could be talked into it, not least if the sycophants who inhabit her little bubble appeal to her massive ego and delusional belief that she's divinely qualified to be president, but I really do think she has too much to lose and that it's better for her, and her quest for ever more fame and fortune, to remain a sort of celebrity kingmaker within the Republican Party. A loss to Obama, before which she'd be placed under a high-powered microscope, could effectively ruin her plans. (She'd probably be better off waiting until '16.)

Not that I care to give Sarah any advice, and not that her best interests are of any concern to me. I just don't think she'll run and I don't see much evidence, not least in this overblown e-mail, that she's made up her mind to do so.