Choosing Joe Miller

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 9/22/10

It is clear now that Lisa Murkowski is one of those which runs deep and dark into the night, known well to aficionados of the occult Slayer/Angel legacy as Vengeance Demons. That she is willing to throw the Alaska race to a Democrat by an excentric write-in candidacy is virtually unprecedented in our day. No doubt she sees her family name as synonymous with Alaska. This is Hapburgian politics and it is much the fashion in our times (Clinton, Bush, Kennedy, Murkowski). Here in New England many still believe that Kennedy is Massachusetts and without Kennedy there is no Massachusetts. It stifles grown, awakening, karma: It prevents the new generation’s dance of creation from taking place. No doubt she really believes that Joe Miller and the Tea Party are “extremist” and she the orthodoxy which will preserve the honored tradition. It is worse for Alaska. Massachusetts is almost 400 years old and weary. Alaska is just being born.

Michael Barone on Cavuto last night compared the Tea Party to what were called “the new people” in the Sixties. The Tea partiers he said are the new “new people.” As it was then, the orthodoxy of the old hopes to stop them and Murkowski leads the charge of old against new.

But what is most enlightening about this episode is how her Republican colleagues in the Senate have responded to her decision, which would jeopardize conservative prospects everywhere. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell in particular. As The Hill reports, McConnell backed the switch when Richard Burr took over as senior Republican on the Senate Energy panel after Murkowski lost the position Tuesday.

The very traditional and very mainstream Republicans had a choice: Past or future, old generation or new, old orthodoxy or new thinking, Murkowski or Miller. They chose Miller. They chose life. They chose their future.