Murkowski The Indispensible

Imagine for a moment that you're a Libertarian, and you live in Alaska.  Sure, that's a strange twist of imagination, but I assure you, I AM going someplace with this, and it doesn't involve otters and baby oil.

Libertarians tend to be hardcore ideologues in their own minds.  Purity is everything to them.  It has to be in order to keep going a futile cause that will never accomplish anything or ever see the light of electoral day.  They also tend to be far more contemptuous of Republicans than they ever are of Democrats, because while they detest the latter (depending on the issue, anyway), they can also respect them as fellow ideologues also fanatically dedicated to a heartfelt, inviolable cause.  But Republicans, in their minds, are the worst sort of quisiling sellouts, claiming to be for "small government" but porking it up when they get into power.

The Republican senator from your state has, for the past eight years, been Lisa Murkowski, who was gifted the seat by her father, Frank, who'd held it for the twenty-two years before that, when he decided he wanted to be governor instead.  The Murkowski Dynasty represents everything you hate in American politics: Cronyism, nepotism, hypocrisy, arrogance.  You cheered wildly and orgasmically when Sarah Palin took on Governor Murkowski in 2006 and beat his ass like a drum.  Though she was the antithesis of your cherished pagan libertinism, the fact that she rebeled against The Dynasty and took down its kingpin had you ready to declare her an honorary Libertarian.

Now the crown princess is running for re-election to her daddy's senate seat, and more manna fell from heaven: She was upset in the Republican primary by a Tea Party kindred spririt named Joe Miller.  Hot damn!  The end of the Murkowski Dynasty is finally at hand!

Then she starts pulling just the sort of arrogant stunts you always knew she would if she was ever in this much trouble.  She refuses to concede.  She calls in national GOP reinforcements.  She starts laying the ground work for suing to overturn the primary election results.

And she does one other thing: She sends out "feelers" to YOUR party, the Libertarian Party, because it's too late to file as an independent (She never drempt she'd ever have to) and there's no other way for her to stay on the general election ballot.

Your party's leadership meets to consider whether to dump its existing candidate (such as he is) and winds up voting unanimously to tell Senator Murkowski to piss off.  Case closed, right?

Not to the Princess, it isn't:

Alaska Libertarian Party Chairman Scott Kohlhaas said Monday that Murkowski’s campaign reached out to his party after she conceded last week — despite the fact that the party’s executive committee had already announced it would not replace its candidate, David Haase, with Murkowski.

“Yes, we’re in discussions with the Murkowski campaign. We’ve always said we’d be open to a sit-down with any Alaskan, especially a sitting U.S. senator,” Kohlhaas said. “Even though the talks are a good thing, we’re not going to flip-flop. We warned them, but they still want to talk.”…

Not only would Haase have to remove himself from the ballot, but the state executive committee would have to approve Murkowski’s candidacy by September 15. The Alaska Libertarian Party, however, already voted on August 30 not to allow Murkowski on the ballot because of ideological differences — a vote that Kohlhaas said will not be reversed.

Whatever happened to that old expression, "No means NO!"  This has a metaphorical resemblance to the beginning stages of a date rape, the kind where the guy says, "Oh, she was saying 'no, no, no," but her body was saying, 'YES!  YES!  YES!'"

Maybe not entirely metaphorical, either:

In the immortal words of Travis Hudson, "Bullshit!"  They've told her to go away once, and she's still hanging around like a stowaway.  She gives every indication of trying to force the ALP's hand by wooing away the hapless Haase and leaving them without a candidate at all unless they capitulate to the Murk's demands.  And she talks big like they're the ones pursuing her - or like she thinks they very shortly will be.

If you're a Libertarian, most especially an ALP poobah, doesn't this capillary-burstingly piss you off?  A RINO phony loses her skirt to her own complacency and tries to submarine your party's slot on the general ballot, and keeps trying after being show the door?  Why would this not cause you to get a restraining order against this parasite?

Now let's conclude the thought experiment and ask the question from a GOP grassroots perspective: Isn't this really, REALLY pathetic?  Isn't Lisa Murkowski combusting her "brand" by making such a public ass of herself by her inability to let it go and lose with grace, or at least a little dignity and modicum of self-respect?  And won't that destroy any Libertarian candidacy she manages to seduce her way into before it even begins?

The biggest Hudsonism of all is Murk's claim that "This isn't about Lisa".  OF COURSE it's all about Lisa.  It's about Lisa from beginning to end, left to right, up to down, back to forth, as far as the east is from the west, and every higher dimension that Stephen Hawking hasn't mathemtically discovered yet.  She lost, she can't win any other way, so she's going to take her revenge on the party electorate that spurned her by screwing them running interference for the other side.

And if she can use the Libertarians to do it, so much the better.

I guess we'll see if all that rock-ribbed, tensile strength, Viagraed, principled Libertarian rigidity is all it's cracked up to be, huh?

Exit question: Who will ALPers want to anally intrude more - Alaska 'Pubbies or the Murkowski Dynasty?

UPDATE: Ensign Morrissey reminds us that, just as Sorry Charlie Crist could have bowed out gracefully and been the loyal soldier for Marco Rubio and regrouped to challenge Bill Nelson in 2012, so the Murk could be doing the same for Joe Miller and refocusing on taking out Mark Begich in 2014.  "Live to fight another day" and all that, as opposed to allowing instant gratification, lack of faith in the voters, and a towering, aggrieved sense of entitlement sound their political death knells.

Google Slade Gorton, my friends.  Or Barry Goldwater.  A defeated incumbent CAN come back, because each state DOES have TWO senate seats.  I've seen it happen.