So basically, if you haven’t been paying attention, the Miller campaign is now reduced to challenging write-in ballots because the “r” in Murkowski looks like a “v.” They even challenged a ballot that says “Lisa Mercoski (sorry if I misspelled).”
I find it endlessly amusing that some folks will yammer on at length about the “original intent” of the Founding Fathers of the Constitution, but don’t give two hoots in hell about the intent of a voter when it comes to an election. It is also worth noting that these are the same douchebags who will spend years screaming about two guys in “black panther garb” standing on a corner somewhere in Philly on election day, but when it comes to widespread screwing of voters, they’re all for it.
We’ll just file this under “principled conservatism.” Because shut up, that’s why.
Heckuva party you got there, guys.
arguingwithsignposts
self awareness is not a common trait in the modern teabagger/conservative.
Cat Lady
Looking for consistency or principles from these teatards is like waiting for Godot. We’re beyond a rational paradigm, and for our firebagger trolls, I blame Obama.
fourlegsgood
At the heart of it, this is because Joe Miller and his other teabagger friends aren’t really interested in representing the voters of their state, they’re just interested in getting power and pushing their own personal agenda.
It’s the absolute antithesis of what public service is about.
Plus they’re assholes. But you knew that.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
Don’t forget that Alaskans get an extra-gigantic helping of hypocrisy included with every government check. Of course, some don’t swallow it, but most do.
JPL
@Cat Lady: What’s up with the sudden influx of firebagger trolls again?
Dave
The GOP has pulled quite a trick. They get everyone worked up over voter fraud (which is quite rare) while they engage in voter suppression with an unrivaled zeal. Even within their own party, they try to disenfranchise the voter. Unreal…
fourlegsgood
@JPL: Ah, they just want to be noticed!!
TR
For all the screaming about non-existent voter fraud from Democrats, they sure don’t have much to say about Katherine Harris purging 10,000 African American voters from the Florida rolls in 2000, in a presidential contest that was ultimately decided by less than 500 votes.
Because, uh, ACORN! And MoveOn! And Michael Moore and Al Gore are fat!
Lev
It’s very simple:
Republicans believe Joe Sixpack is a Republican. And the number of Joe Sixpacks out there easily outpaces the number of left-wing sissies and godless pornographers out there, of course. So when Republicans win, it means that it was a clean election. When they lose, there was massive voter fraud or some other sort of untoward activity going on. Because if Democrats are basically the antichrist, why would anyone vote for them?
I suspect most Republicans would fail the Voight-Kampff empathy test for sure. (Which is not to say they’re not human.)
Wilson Heath
@Dave:
Actually, there is voter fraud. This. This is the new voter fraud, taking votes away that have been validly cast. The only way to plausibly steal an election.
Frakking Bush v. Gore . . . hoocouldanode?
Zifnab
Full Stop.
Because let’s get real here. No one actually gives a fat flying fuck about the “original intent” of a bunch of three-hundred year old British ex-Pat intellectuals.
I want my Super Train. You want your Social Security check not to bounce. And the Tea Baggers who just walked into Congress want their dicks sucked by the highest class of Washington hooker.
Constitution Smonstitution.
If the First Amendment didn’t exist, I’d still want freedom of speech. If the 14th and 19th had come built into the original document, we’d still have the same racist, sexist assholes suggesting minorities and women shouldn’t have civil rights.
The Constitutional Hissyfit has always just been blanket cover to brow beat otherwise sensible people into doing what you want.
Steve
Aren’t literacy tests normally dengre’s beat?
TaMara (BHF)
Because shut up, that’s why, has got to be my favorite phrase from the 2008 election. It really says it all, doesn’t it? Also. Too.
Lev
I love that first Norm Coleman and now Miller have cited Bush v. Gore in their legal arguments. I’ve read that the decision included instructions that said it wasn’t to be used as a precedent. This is a tell. “Yeah, we’re interpreting the law this one time, but never, ever do it like this again. Just pretend it never happened. We will!”
The Other Chuck
Folks who wrote in Murkowski are going to remember this sort of disrespect from the Republican Party. They’re making political enemies for a lifetime in a state where every vote really counts, and it’s almost exclusively among previously Republican voters and party activists.
Jay in Oregon
@Dave:
And I bet if Miller was the write-in candidate and Murkowski was the party choice, absolutely nothing would change; they’d be looking for reasons to not count his votes.
azlib
MIller is just another Teabagger grifter. I guess he is ticked off because Murkowski had the temerity to run as a write-in candidate. Of course Murkowski will just be another reliable R vote, so the end result does not matter a whole lot.
Mike B
Joe Miller is just showing how much he is a “constitutional conservative”. Until that pesky unconstitutional 17th amendment was added, there was “absolutely no right to vote for Senators whatsoever”.
As disgusting as this all is, I can’t help feeling a bit of schadenfreude at watching them eat their own. It would be a bit awkward for them to blame this one on ACORN.
Just Some Fuckhead
Wrong thread.
HyperIon
@arguingwithsignposts wrote: self awareness is not a common trait in the modern teabagger/conservative.
that reminds me of the bush book reviewer (discussed yesterday) who said “W has the self-awareness of a bison”.
Cermet
Ha! What fucking amateurs! Here in maryland in our election for Governor, the repub-a-thug challenger Erlick hired a hack demorat PR firm to robo call 50,000 democratic voters (who else had such a complete list with numbers? and it was a partial smoke screen) and tell them not to vote since the election was already over – this was done during the real election time! Talk about stealing votes and massive fraud! It takes a real thug to dream up shit that bad and repug-a-thugs are (currently) just barely above brown shirts.
Bulworth
Yes, but the Founders were God and these riff-raff voting for Murkowski are probably just dirty facking hippies. Besides the Founders didn’t want the unwashed masses voting for the nation’s Senators. And if we could just go back to the 1800’s this would be a great country again.
Just Some Fuckhead
Funny that, because 200 years ago no one could spell for shit.
policomic
@The Other Chuck: If people could remember anything from one election to the next, the Republican party would be extinct.
freelancer
@Bulworth:
From your lips to Joad’s mouth.
Cermet
@Cermet: My bad, the latest update was 112,000 dem voters were told not to vote!
Roger Moore
@JPL:
They’re happy to see the Democrats fail in the elections, since they’re dumb enough to believe that it somehow validates their viewpoint. Now they want to gloat by trolling the Obots on sites like this one. IOW, they’re the same unaware, self-important douchebags as always.
Elie
@Mike B:
Eating our own is what we do now on both sides of the ball.
Lets just say its the natural outgrowth of applying Darwin’s principles more broadly than he probably intended. That said, any biologist will tell you that the competition and the impulse to eat one’s young is deep seated and very very common in nature. We so called, ahem, modern humans (some are Democrats, some are liberals, lefties, etc, but just some), like to think is that we stand away from the tree with the rubber tire and stalk of bananas tied to it. That is not the case.
Anyone doing a dispassionate and objective reading on primate behavior and the behavior or many other species will recognize us as faithfully carrying on our so called lesser biological bretherens same deeply wired impulses. In fact, our intelligence, instead of mitigating these impulses, just seems to find ways to make these impulses and instincts even more lethal.
I have faith however. We have asteroids, the demise of the sun and just our own plain ability to fuck things up that can call a halt to the mayhem. Till then, we entertain the Gods I am sure — at their pleasure — till we don’t
Cheryl from Maryland
@Cermet: My favorite Republican voter fraud issue in Maryland was when Ellen “Sour Grapes” Sauerby’s crack team of investigators claimed voter fraud in Baltimore because George and Martha Washington voted. The Post, which was still a newspaper in the 1990’s, actually investigated using the telephone book ! and found this lovely couple whose names were… you guessed it …George and Martha Washington. The rethugs couldn’t even be bothered to pick up the telephone!
SiubhanDuinne
Open Thread? No? Aw, what a shame, I’ll have to go O/T for a sec. Just wanted to remind anyone who might be interested that Jon Stewart is going to be on Rachel tonight.
tisalaska
Yeah well you should live here. Lets not forget this is that freak show Palin’s boy. If the asshats of this state would have just voted in only qualified candidate the democrat McAdams when they had a chance this circus would have left town. But no we have to clean up elephant shit for the rest of time.
Zuzu's Petals
Followed the link within the link to Patterico’s “spirited defense” of Miller’s legal argument. My word, that man is a dolt.
tisalaska
oh for F sakes..the second highest garner of votes in the write in behind Murkowski is a crazy with a side of crazy wack job that got arrested at the state fair this year for harassment with signs. You just can’t make this stuff up folks
Cat Lady
@tisalaska:
How do you harass with signs, to the point you get arrested? I have a strange anthropological need to understand the activity of the teabagger as they behave in the wild. I’m from Massachusetts.
Wile E. Quixote
The spelling issue may not matter, according to the Los Angeles Times “…Murkowski is still gaining 89% of the write-in ballots with no dispute…”. It would be fun however if the federal courts let Miller’s suit proceed all the way to the Supreme Court. I’d love to see the piece of shit that was Bush v. Gore tossed back into the faces of Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy.
Either that or let the suit go to the Ninth Circuit and have the court deny Miller’s appeal and write a decision pointing out what a total piece of shit Bush v. Gore is and how the whole “This can never, ever, ever be used as a precedent” part of the decision is utter nonsense.
tisalaska
Yeah well its we have alot of sunlight in the summer..it brings out more than prize size cabbage Cat Lady
http://www.adn.com/2010/08/27/1428432/statement-scuffle-caught-on-video.html
Just fyi..No one caught the part on the video where he was swinging it around. But hey he still managed to get the most votes after Murkowski. And just when you thought O’Donnell had the corner on crazy.
fasteddie9318
Why aren’t we rooting for Miller? Murkowski voted something like 90% with McConnell, so however farther right Miller might be his hypothetical voting record can only diverge from hers by a small margin. Meanwhile, Miller brings the crazy and discredits the GOP while Murkowski, inconceivably since she’s really batshit crazy by any objective measure, is a Very Serious and Responsible Moderate who makes the GOP look more grown up and rational.
Cat Lady
@tisalaska:
Ahhhhh. While he was being arrested he was accusing someone of being “a worthless hippie”. A LaRouchie nutbag accusing someone of being worthless. Self awareness FAIL.
Triassic Sands
@TR:
At least as bad was the purging of supposed felons from the roles. The election was stolen several times over — by purging, voter suppression through coercion, the butterfly ballot, and most grotesquely the SCOTUS.
When all was said and done, what was absolutely obvious in Florida in 2000 was that the intent of the voter had been ignored. The one thing that should count most, counted least, with the Supremes applying the icing to the Banana Republican cake.
If Alaska honors the intent of the voter, Murkowski should win handily. If Miller decides to challenge all the way to the Supreme Court, it will be interesting to see which phony standard the Activist Five apply and who they decide should win.
Did I say “if” Miller challenges all the way? One benefit of this race is the view it is giving of what a devout Tea Bagger is like. I would think by now even a lot of standard issue Wingnuts in Alaska may be getting a little sick of the Joe Miller Show and maybe, by association, of the Tea Party.
wenchacha
Yes, but what about Lizard People?