The Washington Post informs us that “Despite Alaska Senate race results, Joe Miller presses on in principle“:
… Never mind that the incumbent, Sen. Lisa Murkowski ( R ), has already declared that she made history by mounting the first successful write-in campaign for Senate in more than 50 years. Or that the Alaska Republican Party has called on Miller to “end his campaign in a dignified manner.” Or that there is but a sliver of a chance he could win even if all his court challenges prove successful.
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Miller, a tea party favorite who beat Murkoswki in the GOP primary, has alleged bias on the part of state officials as well as voter fraud, arguing that some of the ballots have suspiciously similar handwriting. He has attacked the state Division of Elections for accepting minor misspellings of Murkowski’s name. He has complained that the hand-count of the write-in ballots started too early to give him enough time to train his volunteers to monitor the outcome.
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And he has asked for a hand recount of all the ballots, saying the machine-counted votes that went largely for him should receive the same scrutiny – and potentially benefit of the doubt – as the write-in ones cast for Murkowski…
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“I’m just going to be very straightforward here. I think that race is over,” said former congressman Norm Coleman, a Republican who was defeated in the 2008 U.S. Senate race in Minnesota. That contest dragged on for eight months after Election Day as the candidates battled in court before Democrat Al Franken was declared the winner.
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“The counting’s been done. I’m not sure that anything is going to change,” Coleman said in a C-SPAN interview set to air Sunday. “Without criticizing Joe Miller, I would offer him advice . . . that I think it’s time to move on, that there’s not much you can gain by extending the process.”…
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Miller’s most ardent supporters say they are concerned by the allegations of fraud and negligence – and that more is at stake than the outcome of one race.
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“I don’t think it’s a win or lose for him at this point,” said Greg Pugh, a campaign volunteer from Wasilla. “What he’s trying to say is, there were certain anomalies that have happened and the law has not been upheld. He wants to see that the election process has integrity for future elections.”
As the old saying goes, “When someone tells you it’s not the money, it’s the principle… it’s the money.”
Of course, the Renowned Republican Lockstep would indicate that Miller should’ve been given his orders (and some kind of sweetener) to STFU and wait for the next election. I’m actually rooting for injuries wondering whether Miller’s “principled” stand is just his attempt to milk the situation for every last drop of attention (funding), or if this distant “tea party rebellion” represents a crack in the Republican ranks?
Odie Hugh Manatee
Judging from Miller’s known past I would venture to guess that he is raking in the last of the dollars he can, milking this for all it’s worth. Until the gravy train starts back up.
Oops. I mean ‘until the next election’.
jimBOB
Miller will be shut down by the GOP establishment fairly soon, because his challenge would have the effect of denying the party a Senate vote. By contrast, Coleman’s challenge denied a vote to the Democrats, so the GOP establishment, not to mention their loyal Wurlitzer myrmidons, were happy to back him up for months.
Back in the day Miller would have received a call from Darth Cheney telling him to knock it off, or else. These days the message may come from Rush, and publicly. No idea if there will be a secret financial sweetener offered.
Arclite
Title Correction:
When Norm Fucking Coleman’s Telling You to Go Home…
Comrade Javamanphil
The third possibility is he’s just dumber than a rock and actually believes his own nonsense. Although how you get voter fraud in a state as white as Alaska confounds me. They never seem to have to send the election monitors into the primarily white districts of the lower 48…
WereBear
Tea Party politics can never fail, only fail to win enough votes.
And why should that stand in anybody’s way?
Triassic Sands
Norm “We’ll Count Every Damn Vote and then Keep Right on Counting” Coleman telling Joe “Let the Supreme Court of the United States Declare Me the Winner Please Please Please” Miller to fold up the tent and go home…that’s rich.
Jimbo
Shorter Miller…
JPL
Would this be the first time that Miller pressed on in principle?
Dennis SGMM
In view of the antics of Joe Miller, Sarah Palin, and the late Ted Stevens, Alaska should consider changing its motto to “The Grifter State.”
ChrisNYC
I wish the damn media would put some heat on DeMint about this. He’s still raising money under the premise that the race is too close to call and thousands of ballots remain uncounted. So far, he’s hoovered up $152K for the Miller Recount Fund.
Also, it would be nice if someone would figure out how much public money Miller is wasting by having courts in Alaska decide his frivolous claims.
Wag
Can’t you feel the Joementum? It’s gonna be Senator Miller. I feel it in my tingle spot.
Wag
Jude
It’s shit like this that actually makes me almost sympathetic to the teabaggers. Fuck this shit about your betters telling you to run along. If he wants votes recounted, recount them. All of them. If Gore had pursued that strategy for Florida in 2000, we wouldn’t have had the disaster of Bush for 8 years.
You want to alienate the public and make them even more cynical about the voting and governing process? Do shit like this, where the establishment always wins.
Sure, Joe Miller’s a crazy fucker, but he’s not substantively different from Murkowski on any important vote. Let him have his recounts. That’s how you take away some of the resentment.
I mean, if this weren’t a teabagger-on-GOP heavyweight bout, how many of you would be siding with the established candidate? Don’t let your own distaste for the teabaggers stand in the way of, you know, your principles.
artem1s
This proves that the TParty is merely a fundraising tool for the GOP. They get their Senate vote and have raised some extra $$$$ from the TPidiots during the legally required recount phase. They can use the remaining PR from the event to thoroughly and publicly humiliate Miller and throw him in the broken grifter trash heap and rile up the most ardent TPidiots with tales of not-stolen elections so they are all buttered up for the next round of grifting. mission accomplished. time to go home and start looking for the next tool.
Albatrossity
He learned at the feet of the biggest attention-whore in Alaska, Mooselini. So he won’t quit as long as anyone is paying attention to him.
debbie
This would be in keeping with the definition of the Tea Party as “militant ignorance.”
ChrisNYC
@Wag: Maybe the money is lost to other causes, but I don’t know that they’re near the end of the pie yet. I don’t care that the recount is continuing. I just want DeMint put on the spot. Pressing on the GOP infighting — DeMint v. other GOP Senators, DeMint/Palin v. Murkowski — would be helpful — just for chaos purposes.
Also, I want DeMint and the rest solidly painted as extremists/opportunists. Murkowski has real steam behind her with the media because she was able to pull the write in off (nothing succeeds like success) and I think she’d happily lead the “not completely crazy” wing of the GOP.
It would make it more likely that people like Collins, Snowe and Brown would peel off for important votes because it wouldn’t be a choice between fall in line or be a RINO!!!! It would be a choice between: (1) voting with the extremist, socially conservative Southern Senator Jim DeMint (supporter of extremist, losing candidates O’Donnell, Angle and Miller) who is trying to build his own fiefdom within the Senate (and is willing to defy the will of the AK voters to do it); or (2) voting as a reasonable, responsible Republican.
They’re all getting primaried next time anyway, their best chance is to put up a unified front representing the dearly departed GOP moderates. And Dems can benefit from that.
El Cid
Isn’t there a Bush v Gore precedent on this? Oh, right, I sometimes forget that that was just a one-time deal.
Mr. Prosser
I don’t think the “centrist” third party idea is going to fly, but if it does this recount/court challenge charade will be standard in 2012.
ChrisNYC
@Jude: Yeah, Miller’s no different from Murkowski on positions — except on DADT, abortion, stem cell research, the constitutionality of Social Security, Medicare and federal unemployment insurance, whether the Dept of Education should be abolished and whether the federal government should invest in infrastructure spending.
Oh, and the wonderfulness of Palin — I think they disagree on that as well. :)
Jamie
Another Strange thing is that Miler hasn’t gotten a Fox show yet.
Fat Tony
@ChrisNYC:
Oh SNAP!
alwhite
OT – sorta. a bit of trivia:
Normie wanted to be Governor of MN and little Timmie Pawlenty was going to get his ass kicked by Paul Wellstone until Karl Rove stepped in and told them to change partners. Timmie would be enjoying his well earned obscurity today while NFC would be spending all his free time in Iowa & New Hampshire had Rove not intervened.
Mike in NC
Yup, count on Crazy Joe Miller to crank out a book on how he wuz robbed of a Senate seat, and the teabaggers will line up in droves to buy a copy.
tom p
Boy reading the article and the comments is really funny… substitute Murkowski for Miller change the date to just after the primary… and VOILA! You are in mind bend zone.
Murkowski is a whore who took the Repubs money until they voted her out… Then all of a sudden she was an Independent!!! (who wouldn’t return any of the Repubs money) Now that she has won the General election, she is a Rupub again!!!
For my money, Murkowski is just as big a whore as Palin… only more dangerous: People actually take her serious.
Faux News
@ Jimbo: besides spitting up my coffee reading your post all I can say is “I’m not worthy”!
Roger Moore
@jimBOB:
No problem. The Republicans will just put holds and/or filibuster every single piece of legislation that goes into the Senate until the issue is finished. It’s the only fair thing to do.
Bella Q
@Comrade Javamanphil:
Um, Alaska Natives. They are not white, and while the “fraud” (actually, lack of disenfranchisement of your opposition’s voters) alleged here was in favor the Republican deemed too moderate, it wasn’t for Joe and his militant teahadists. Hence, fraud.
Chris G
@alwhite: I have to believe Norm is kicking himself for not running for governor this year.
InuitKisses
I worked the Alaska race, and this is totally unsurprising from Miller. He truly is a sociopath above and beyond what’s been covered by the media, which really dropped the ball on the 5,234,995 aspects of his personal behavior that make clear he is in fact a lunatic worthy of the most padded of rooms.
This isn’t Teahadism or looking for the handout to take a rest – it’s his blindness to anything aside from his perceived personal perfection. He COULDN’T have lost, in his mind, because he is the true defender of the constitution.
That said, there were some voting irregularities, as they are are in any election. In this instance, yeah, it does seem the Division of Elections was putting its thumb on the scale for Murkowski, with new election procedures, new vote counting procedures, etc. I heard, from Murkowski people prior to Election Day, that Lisa was paying people to “assist” voters in the Native villages (where many don’t speak English) by shuttling them to the polls and then writing in her name, regardless of if they actually wanted to vote for her.
That’s anecdotal, but whatever. Nothing that happened would have changed the outcome. Jesus Joe and his Band of Merry Grifters will never leave quietly.
The Grand Panjandrum
The Law of Voter Fraud (According to Wingnuttia): If the most conservative candidate in the race loses a close one you have prima facie evidence that voter fraud was rampant!
Chris Grrr
@Triassic Sands: Norm being the weasel, of course, who publicly counseled Al Franken the day after their 2008 contest to avoid the indignity and expense of a recount…
jimBOB
@Roger Moore:
The Republicans will just put holds and/or filibuster every single piece of legislation that goes into the Senate until the issue is finished.
Why would they stop doing this after Murkowski is seated? And wasn’t this precisely what they’ve been doing with their 40 votes in the current session?
kay
@InuitKisses:
Funny story.
I thought so too, although I didn’t read anything other than what was printed in widely-read outlets, so I’m glad you’re corroborating my impression.
This sort of got my attention:
I’d just love to know the sequence of workplace events that led to that bizarre, specific email confession. Did they insist he write ‘I lied’, twice, because he was still trying to weasel out of it? Was someone standing over him?
It’s like something a parent would force a particularly deceitful and delusional child to write, as punishment.
Triassic Sands
@Chris Grrr:
In retrospect, from the weasel’s point of view, that seems to have been very good advice. Too bad for Norm that Al decided on a different course of action.
And good for us. The cast of Saturday Night Live (or former cast) would not be my first choice to look for prospective elected officials. But Franken is a smart guy and he is capable of being serious — seriously serious. Unlike “comedian” Jon Stewart (quotes because I don’t find him funny), whose seriousness seems strained and not quite real, Franken strikes me as one of the few Democratic senators who isn’t a joke. If I lived in Minnesota, I’d vote for him without reservation and I’d take him over.
I live in Washington State and I’d take Franken over Maria Cantwell in a heartbeat. I’m happier with Patty Murray, but forced to choose, I still might go with Franken. If my two senators were Murray and Franken, I’d be pretty satisfied. I’m really glad Franken was up for re-election in 2010; I could see him losing in the current climate and that would have been a real shame.
Congratulations, Minnesota, for making the right choice — if only by the thinnest of margins. You almost blew it.
It’s hilarious (in a pathetic way) that after being the guy who dragged out his own election recounts to the bitterest of ends, Coleman is now an expert on close elections and what to do. I am absolutely FOR recounts, when they are legally and reasonably called for. I’m not for recounting endlessly in the faint hope that something might happen to change a legitimate outcome.
Neil B
This hilariously ironic comment from a supporter:
“What he’s trying to say is, there were certain anomalies that have happened and the law has not been upheld. He wants to see that the election process has integrity for future elections.”
Heh, it never mattered to their kind before …