Lisa’s LP ‘Lifeboat’ Bid?

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In the comments of yesterday’s post about Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s continuing push for the Alaska Libertarian Party nomination, commenter “Carl” offered a theory that libertarian blogger Thomas Knapp finds sensible:

What she’s looking for is a lifeboat — a nice, lucrative job as a corporate lobbyist, VP of a “defense” contractor firm, something like that that keeps her well-paid and down south.
The bluff — aimed at the Republican establishment higher-ups who can summon that kind of lifeboat for her with a few words in the right ears — is “hook me up or I hand this seat to the Democrats.”

To quote Allahpundit, “Hmmmmm.” But I’m invoking Occam’s Razor here and sticking with the simplest explanation: Murkowski is just another D.C. power-junkie addicted to having a bunch of staffers who call her “Senator” as they jump to satisfy her every whim.

“She doesn’t want to give up power, even though she lost,” as Dan Riehl says. That’s your Single Bullet Theory, and any speculation beyond that takes you into Grassy Knoll territory.

Meanwhile, Sean Cockerham of the Anchorage Daily News reports:

For Murkowski to run as a Libertarian, [LP Senate candidate] Haase would have to step aside and the party would need to reverse its vote barring her from the ticket.
“It would be a serious flip-flop,” party chairman [Scott] Kohlhaas said. “And I don’t think it’s happening.” . . .
Haase said Murkowski does have Libertarian tendencies but that her support for the war on drugs is a problem.

Maybe Lisa could talk to 2008 LP presidential candidate Bob Barr about the drug issue. Bob used to be hardcore against drugs when he was a Republican, but has mellowed out as a Libertarian. Not quite Cheech and Chong, but no longer Sgt. Stadanko.

As I noted yesterday, Murkowski isn’t the only Republican talking to the LP. Bill Walker, who placed third in the GOP gubernatorial primary (challenging Gov. Sean Parnell), reached out to the Libertarians after being turned down by the Alaska Independence Party. 

Pattie Epler of Alaska Dispatch points out that these party-switch shenanigans can’t last much longer:

Still, time is running short. The current candidates would have to write a letter to the state Division of Elections withdrawing their names and the party would have to agree to substitute the new candidates as the official nominees. And the elections office must have the new nominations by Sept. 15.

So this storyline can only continue for another week and, as Epler explains, the prospect of Murkowski attempting a write-in candidacy is remote. The practical effect of the continuing shenanigans at this point is to give the media an excuse to ignore the guy who actually won the Republican nomination.

JOE MILLER for U.S. SENATE

Texas Burning

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Charges of vote fraud in the Lone Star State:

On Tuesday, August 24, Harris County’s tax assessor-collector, Leo Vasquez, held a press conference in which he detailed what he called systematic and organized voter registration fraud across the county. . . .
What happened next is what threatens everything. In the overnight/early morning hours of Saturday, August 28, a warehouse in Houston burned down. . . .

There’s an ACORN angle here, so read the whole thing. I’ll point out that it’s writtten by our old blog buddy Bryan Preston, who left a job as communication director for the Texas GOP to rejoin the blog world at Pajamas Media. Welcome back, Bry!

EXCLUSIVE: Lisa Murkowski Meets Personally With Alaska LP Officials UPDATE: Bitney, Halcro Behind Push

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Alaska Republican sources confirm the report by Eric Dondero that Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski had lunch in Anchorage today with Libertarian Party senatorial candidate Dave Haase and state LP chairman Scott Kohlhaas.

One source said that when Haase was asked about the meeting afterwards, he indicated that he had made no decision about Murkowski’s effort to replace him as the Libertarian candidate, even though the state LP executive committee had previously rejected Murkowski.

Murkowski was defeated by Tea Party challenger Joe Miller in the Aug. 24 Republican primary, but refused to concede until after absentee ballots were counted.

After Murkowski’s concession speech last week, I warned that “shenanigans” are still afoot in Alaska, and her top supporters have continued pushing her bid to get the LP slot.

Now, Dondero and other sources say that Republican Bill Walker, who mounted an unsuccessful GOP primary challenger to Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell, has made an effort to secure the LP gubernatorial nomination (replacing Billy Toien). Walker had previously been rebuffed by the Alaska Independence Party.

UPDATE: At least one top national GOP official has contacted the Alaska LP to discuss the latest developments. LP officials have not changed their determination to stick with their party’s current nominees.

UPDATE II: I’m going to have to put the squeeze on my sources, as it appears that these exclusive tips aren’t quite as exclusive as I’d been led to believe. When Allah and Ace both beat me on this kind of story — my home field, as it were — it’s kinda embarrassing.

Well, exclusive: Lisa and her new BFFs at the Alaska LP had barbecued ribs for lunch.

UPDATE III: I reported Aug. 27 that longtime Palin-hater Andrew Halcro was the first to promote the Murkowksi-Libertarian idea, but Scott Conroy at Real Clear Politics now gets Murkowski campaign manager John Bitney on the record:

“If she wants to stay in the race, I’ll support her 100 percent.”
Reached by phone from Murkowski’s campaign office, which has remained up and running as staffers complete administrative tasks, Bitney sounded like someone who was itching to jump back into the fight.
“It is a campaign office that is just ready to launch at a moment’s notice,” he said.

Maybe you don’t know who Bitney is, but he’s a favorite “anonymous” source for anti-Palin journalists.

Why? Because he was on her 2006 gubernatorial campaign staff and subsequently became her legislative director until he developed what one Republican source in Alaska described as a “zipper problem.” The married Bitney had an affair with another man’s wife and was fired by Palin. He has been badmouthing her ever since.

Bitney has presented himself as the strategic genius behind Palin’s gubernatorial campaign but, as my source said last week in reference to Bitney’s handling of Murkowski’s campaign, “You go from 40 points ahead to losing by 1,600 votes? Some genius.”

Another source in Alaska suggests that business supporters of Murkowksi have also been promoting her effort to get the Libertarian nomination. They’re probably concerned about losing their influence in GOP politics.

UPDATE IV: Eric Dondero at Libertarian Republican now gives background, including the fact that “at least one former staffer for US Congressman Ron Paul” has been talking to LP candidate Dave Haase. So there’s a Paulista angle here that ought to make things interesting.

UPDATE V: Welcome, Instapundit readers! As for Professor Reynolds’ theory that Murkowski would not risk “the enmity of Tea Party folks nationwide,” I frankly don’t think she gives a rip about anyone but herself and her precious power.

Being called “senator” seems to be powerfully addictive. Note how Arlen Specter desperately tried to hang on. I’d be interested in knowing what percentage of U.S. Senators have voluntarily retired in the past 50 years.

UPDATE VI: A reader writes to correct the record. As explained in Sarah Palin’s memoir, Going Rogue, although Bitney has claimed that he was fired for the affair, he was actually fired for incompetence — including one occasion when he forgot to bring a bill to the bill-signing ceremony. As the reader says, “Bitney uses that false story in order to exonerate himself for being fired for incompetence and to make Sarah Palin look like a religious zealot out to punish adulterers.”

UPDATE VII: Dan Riehl points out that in a debate last month with Miller, “Murkowski said she respects the electorate and would support whoever wins.”

UPDATE VIII: Examining the “lifeboat” theory.

Because Fedoras Are Sexy: Ed Driscoll Has a ‘Hot American-Cuban Wife’

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He reveals this by way of pushing back at this fear-mongering outburst by Cynthia Tucker:

Our long, hot summer needed another ingredient to induce a fever-like madness in the national psyche: demographic change. Over the last year and a half, many Americans have begun to see a deeper message in President Obama’s inauguration — the end of the white majority. For some, especially those who are middle-aged and older, it’s a jarring and unwelcome message.

To which Driscoll replies:

Yeah, I was just saying the same thing to my hot American-Cuban wife – thinking about how them for’ners has got me all riled up, by cracky. . . .
But Cynthia wants to make sure that you know that just because she is calling you a racist doesn’t mean that she thinks you’re a racist, though you most certainly are a racist. . . .

Ms. Tucker previously aired her nonsensical claims on The Weekly Chris Matthews Show Nobody Actually Watches, so that’s kind of old news. But this is the first time our friend Ed has called our attention to the hotness of Mrs. Driscoll.

We demand photographic proof, Ed. A bikini shot, at least, although lingerie would be acceptable.

Economics, Politics and Propaganda

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If the New York Times is going to add an economist as a columnist, who do you think they’re going to pick? Perhaps someone like Thomas Sowell, whose free-market arguments could balance the neo-Keynesianism of Paul Krugman?

Of course not. They bring aboard Peter Orszag, who until recently was Obama’s director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, and a former Clinton administration economic adviser. His track record? In a classic of shortsightedness, Orzag co-authored a 2002 policy paper that asserted “the risk to the government from a potential default on [Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac] debt is effectively zero.”

Orzag’s Monday column urged Congress to “continue the [Bush] tax cuts for two years but end them for good in 2013.” Francis Cianfrocca responds at the New Ledger:

For some reason, I had thought Peter Orszag was an economist. But his arguments in today’s New York Times at every turn are based only on political calculations, particularly as regards the difficulty of getting Dems and Reps to agree on anything. His plan (extending the Bush tax cuts for everyone for two years) is attractive not for any economic sense it might make, but because it’s possible. Serendipitously, the tax cuts will end automatically, while every other outcome requires a vote in Congress.
And there’s not a nod given to the raging policy debate, which is: why isn’t the economy actually recovering, despite a huge stimulus and zero interest rates? His plan simply assumes a strong traditional recovery will be underway by 2013. If you can’t raise taxes now because of the hurt you’re putting on consumption, then on what basis do you think you’ll be able to in two years? Things might not be much better by then. Just like the “Summer of Recovery” marketing plan, this is based on assuming that a recovery will simply materialize. . . .

Please read the whole thing. Orzag assumes as a premise of his syllogism what is, in fact, a dubious thesis: That Keynesian stimulus actually works. Orzag further seems to assume that “tax cuts for the rich” cause deficits when, in fact, the federal deficit is caused by overspending, rather than by undertaxation.

By offering political assertions under the guise of economic “expertise,” Orzag is engaged in propaganda. Glad somebody called him out on it.

Weigel on Delaware

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Dave Weigel is a native of Delaware and has a feature at Slate about the Senate campaign between Mike Castle and Christine O’Donnell. He explains last week’s onslaught of negative attacks on O’Donnell:

When she declined to stand aside for Castle, who’s been eying an open Senate seat for years, the party ignored her.
It stopped ignoring her last month. In Alaska, Joe Miller . . . defied predictions and polls in order to beat Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the GOP primary. The Tea Party Express, the political arm of the movement that had spent $550,000 on ads to help Miller, declared victory and planted a new flag in Delaware. O’Donnell, the group announced, would be the movement’s new cause, with ads and fundraising drives that would push her over the top.
The Republican establishment woke up and turned the cannons.

And that’s the story in a nutshell. Everyone who has been participating in the oppo-research dump on O’Donnell is doing the bidding of the same GOP Establishment that tried to foist Charlie Crist on an unwilling electorate.

Some people have accused O’Donnell of paranoia for complaining about being followed by video “trackers.” But from Weigel’s story, here’s the kick in the head:

She happily points out the tracker that Republicans have sent to follow her.

Yeah, that’s right: Republicans are paying these people to stalk her. It’s outrageous, and anyone who supports Mike Castle is endorsing that kind of tactic in what is — I feel obliged to point out — a GOP primary for an open seat. This is what the Not One Red Cent rebellion is about: The party establishment need to stop meddling in contested primaries.

Let me repeat the question I asked over the weekend: How many pro-life voters in Delaware? Castle’s pro-choice, O’Connell’s pro-life, and that life-or-death issue ought to be decisive in a GOP primary.

CHRISTINE O’DONNELL for U.S. SENATE