Queen Lisa To GOP: "Murk You!"

One thing I'll say for Lisa Murkowski: she never seems to spend time on any particular flailing electoral gambit for long:

Senator Lisa Murkowski is strongly considering a mounting a November write-in campaign to keep her seat and could make an announcement as soon as tomorrow, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.

Running as a write-in candidate appears to be Murkowski’s last remaining option. The Senate Republican Conference Vice Chairwoman met with Libertarian Party nominee David Haase on Tuesday to discuss taking his spot on the ballot, but according to a party spokesman, even if Haase dropped out, the party’s executive board — which last week voted against allowing Murkowski on the ballot — does not appear amenable to changing its decision.

Should Murkowski pull the trigger on a write-in campaign, GOP sources say she would face opposition from the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The NRSC endorsed Joe Miller immediately after Murkowski conceded the primary, and the GOP committee intends to stick with the Fairbanks attorney and provide him with the full weight of its backing.

This is what a short attention span costs you.  If the Murk had simply refused to concede and took Miller to court, the NRSC would be caught between the proverbial rock and the hard place.  The primary would be up in the air pending the outcome of the litigation, and meanwhile the general election clock would be tick-tick-ticking away, with each passing day leaving the field of battle uncontested to Scott McAdams and the Dems.

The odd part of that is that one of the purposes of conceding the primary would usually have been to do the GOP the favor of sparing it the aforementioned nightmare scenario.  Be the good soldier (to a point) by getting out of the way and letting Joe Miller run his general election campaign, even if she didn't endorse him.  But by now it's clear that her only purpose in conceding was to enable her to go to the Libertarians without any entangling loose ends.  Now that they've turned her down (again), she can't retract her concession.  And so the only option left is the write-in route.

Notice I didn't say viable option.  A Donk poll last week showed a Libertarian Murk trailing Mr. Miller 38%-34% with McAdams at 22%.  Having to go the write-in route, even with her seven-figure campaign warchest bankrolling it, is going to winnow down her support to her hardcore backers, and honestly, establishmentarianism and grassroots populism aren't too awfully compatible concepts.

There can be only one goal of such a futile gesture: to play the spoiler, screw Miller to get McAdams elected, and exact her vengeance on the GOP for spurning her.  Contra Eeyore, however, I don't think her effort would be successful.  By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, with all her share of the Democrat vote going to McAdams, and the latter and Miller splitting her indies down the middle, I get Miller 44.6%, McAdams 38.3%, Murk 11.1%.

If the fits & starts pattern of this Murky saga continues to hold true, and her envelope-back bears any resemblance to mine, Queen Lisa's big announcement will morph her from Uma Thurman in My Super Ex-Girlfriend into Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride.

The next chapter will come in Lame Duck territory, which is why Delawairy 'Pubbies would be well advised to stick with Mike Castle and Illinoisies with Mark Kirk both to take those Senate seats immediately, because the "woman-scorned" fury the Murk could wreak as Dirty Harry Reid's sixtieth vote is unimaginable.