Posts tagged Lisa Murkowski

Still Miller Time???

0
2 years ago
by Michael Weiss in

Sarah and JoeJoe

(Ed. note: Alaska has  since decided to ring the last call bell on Miller Time and has cer­ti­fied Lisa Murkowski as their Senator)

It’s hard to believe, but even after:

  • The tal­lied votes show Lisa Murkowski ahead of Joe Miller by 10,328 votes,
  • Throw­ing out all 8,159 con­tested Murkowski votes, she still leads by 2,169,
  • The Alaska Supreme Court found against Miller’s claim that the con­tested votes should not count, and
  • The Alaska Divi­sion of Elec­tions has announced that they will cer­tify Lisa Murkowski as the win­ner of November’s election…

Miller hasn’t given up. He intends to appeal in fed­eral court. The grounds of his claim have yet to be disclosed.

I know I men­tioned this before, but why is it that it seems to be only con­ser­v­a­tives who want to go against the will of the peo­ple in elections?

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Most Telling

0
2 years ago
by Michael Weiss in

(Ed. Note. Update: Sen­ate Repeals DADT)

This morn­ing, the Sen­ate voted for clo­ture on the bill repeal­ing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Six Repub­li­cans voted in favor of cloture:

  • Susan Collins (ME)
  • Olympia Snowe (ME)
  • Mark Kirk (IL)
  • Lisa Murkowski (AK)
  • George Voinovich (OH)
  • Scott Brown (MA)

All of them, except for Brown and Kirk, have been in the Tea Party’s sights. Given how Brown has proven to be very mod­er­ate by Repub­li­can stan­dards, I won­der how long it will be before he, too, is targeted.

Updated to add: The final Sen­ate vote is expected to occur at about 3PM EST.

Joe the Loser

0
2 years ago
by Michael Weiss in
Joe Miller candidate for Alaska's Senator

Joe Miller (Image by zieak via Flickr)

When is it time to give up? Joe Miller doesn’t think he’s hit that point. But the only path he has to becom­ing Sen­a­tor rep­re­sent­ing Alaska is to have every bal­lot he’s chal­leng­ing get thrown out, and then have a man­ual recount that might give him another cou­ple thou­sand votes.

But what galls me is that this is no longer about win­ning the elec­tion. This is about dis­en­fran­chis­ing vot­ers. For Miller to “win,” he has to find a way for the state gov­ern­ment to ignore votes cast by peo­ple who wanted Lisa Murkowski to rep­re­sent them in the Sen­ate. In other words, he is actively try­ing to under­mine democracy.

I am per­fectly happy to sup­port recounts, man­ual or oth­er­wise, as long as the goal is to divine the will of the peo­ple. And I’m happy to sup­port efforts to ensure that the peo­ple who vote are the peo­ple who are legally enti­tled to do so. But when the goal becomes dis­en­fran­chis­ing vot­ers, it tears at the very fab­ric of our soci­ety. I can­not and will not sup­port that.

I’m sure this must hap­pen with Democ­rats as well, but the only instances of which I’m aware are Repub­li­cans. It hap­pened in Florida in 2000, Wash­ing­ton in 2004, and Min­nesota in 2008. In every case, there was a Repub­li­can effort to dis­en­fran­chise vot­ers. I’d like to know if there have been any Demo­c­ra­tic (aside from Dix­ie­crat) efforts to dis­en­fran­chise vot­ers. Can any of you point to one?

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Humpty Dumpty and the Conservatives

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2 years ago
by Monotreme in

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather a scorn­ful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The ques­tion is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many dif­fer­ent things.”

“The ques­tion is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be mas­ter, that’s all.”

Dana Mil­bank reports on the death of the Con­gres­sional conservative.

Mil­bank was taken to task by a reader who claimed that Lisa Murkowski was “the most lib­eral … Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor west of Maine and con­sid­er­ably to the left of most of her con­stituents” and invited him to check her life­time Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive Union rat­ing. So, he took the reader up on the offer. While he was at it, he checked the rat­ings of Murkowski L (70.2%) and Ben­nett (83.6%) vs Repub­li­can lead­er­ship of years past.

Fail­ing the Ben­nett test at under 83.6% were, well, almost all of the Repub­li­can lead­ers of the past 40 years who served in Congress.

So, what is a conservative?

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