A call to arms: against the political machine

If you follow national politics, you probably know that Sen. Lisa Murkowski (RINO-AK) has narrowly lost a primary challenge to an Alaskan attorney, a friend and ally of Gov. Sarah Palin, named Joe Miller. You’ve probably also seen the news that the GOP establishment (specifically, the Alaska Republican Party and the National Republican Senatorial Committee) has been actively working for Sen. Murkowski against Miller—urging her to attack him, running a phone bank for her out of Alaska Republican Party headquarters on election day, and now sending the NRSC’s general counsel to Alaska to give her “guidance”; as well, Thomas Van Flein has filed a protest with Alaska’s Division of Elections against Bonnie Jack, an observer with the Murkowski campaign, who “used confidential information outside the voter observation confines and called a voter to resurrect a disqualified ballot.” The situation is such that Miller is now having to fight back against his own ostensible party. (Remember, the chair of the Alaska GOP is the guy who had to pay the biggest ethics fine in Alaskan history after Sarah Palin blew the whistle on him, and is also a personal enemy of Miller’s, for reasons that will be referenced below.)

Riehl has some choice things to say about the whole situation:

It isn’t as if Cornyn’s NRSC wants another independent-minded conservative like Jim DeMint to join the club on the Hill. And when one thinks of how influential any one senator can actually be, especially within party ranks, there is far more at stake here than what some pundits seem to believe.

There are additional reasons why we may soon see what amounts to a civil war within the GOP in Alaska, one that could easily spill over nationally, infuriating the Republican base if the establishment attempts to steal this election for Murkowski. . . .

A bigger problem may be Alaskan Republican Party (ARP) Chair, Randy Ruedrich. That would be the guy who most likely ordered the phone banking for Murkowski out of the ARP HQ. He’s a political enemy of both Joe Miller and Sarah Palin. That started when he resigned and later was hit with the biggest ethics fine in Alaskan history for his role on the state gas and oil commission. . . .

Ruedrich threw in with the anti-Palin old guard and the ARP became no friend to Sarah Palin—Governor, or not. And it was Joe Miller who then tried to unseat him as state party chair. See what I’m getting at here? Intra-state, intra-party civil war, with the potential to spill over into the national scene, in part, thanks to any possible NRSC meddling. . . .

The battle for the GOP may not wait until after November. There’s a real possibility we start having that fight right here and right now. You can help support Joe Miller here. If the establishment is lined up against him as much as it appears, he’s going to need all the help he can get.

I only disagree with Riehl on one thing: there is no “may not wait,” and no “may soon see”; the battle has been joined, and in this current political climate, that means it’s already national. The only thing that could have prevented this battle breaking out would have been for Sen. Murkowski to graciously concede, or at least commit herself not to seek a recount or a third-party run if Miller’s lead holds—and like any party hack who’s all about the position and the power, she refused to do so. Instead, she’s called the war elephants in on her side, and we now have a fight on our hands. It’s elephants vs. grizzly bears, and the only question is whether we’re willing to recognize the fact and dig in.

This is no small matter. At this point, it seems reasonable to expect that Sen. Murkowski and her RNC/NRSC/ARP allies are going to follow the Franken/Gregoire playbook and do whatever they have to do in order to produce a final official vote count that favors her—she because she wants the seat at whatever cost, they partly because she’s one of them and partly because they’re afraid she’ll pull a Charlie Crist and hurt their chances of getting their majority perks back in the Senate. The only question for those who support the GOP’s principles rather than its perks is this: are we going to let them stay under the radar and fight in the shadows, as the Democrats did for Al Franken in Minnesota and Christine Gregoire in Washington state, or are we going to call them out and man the barricades against them?

If it’s the former, Joe Miller will lose, which means we all lose (and not just conservatives, either); there’s just no way the honest brokers in Alaska will be able to stand up to the combined state and national political machine. If we wait for the battle to come out in the open, we’ll lose it before we ever see it start. The only way to win is to bring it out in the open ourselves: to expose the machinations of the party establishment, openly declare our opposition and our refusal to accept GOP politics as usual, and rally as big and as passionate a national response as we can possibly manage. Absent significant national exposure and pressure, the political establishment will find some way to defeat Miller; absent significant pressure and/or incentive, the Murkowskis will do whatever they can to keep from losing that seat. Only the establishment can convince the Murkowskis to back down, and that will only happen if they can be convinced that they have to back Miller 100%; and that will only happen if the GOP base across the country rises up to demand it.

Which means, we need to get people moving, and we need to do it now. Any conservative who cares at all about fair process—to say nothing about electing conservatives—needs to stand up and do everything possible to publicize this, to shine the light of day on it, and to mobilize the GOP base to tell the party machinery to take their thumb off the scales and support their own voters. Or else.

In truth, this is part of a bigger story; it’s not just conservatives but liberals who should be doing everything possible to support Joe Miller against the political elites. I’ve been meaning to write on that anyway, but in the interests of speed and length, I’m going to save that for a follow-on post. For now, we need to recognize the key development: the Tea Party has just met its Shot Heard ‘Round the World; if I may mangle the historical metaphor (and why not, since I’ve just conflated 1776 with 1848 anyway), it now falls to us to play Paul Revere and rouse the countryside before it’s too late. The battle has been joined in earnest in Alaska—the voters of the party versus the establishment that wrecked it.

Gov. Palin hit the highest note of her political career, in my opinion, when she declared in her resignation speech, “Politically speaking, if I die, I die”; she stands in stark opposition to a political class for whom political survival is their highest (and in some cases only) creed. The only thing necessary for the triumph of oligarchy is for good voters to do nothing. Let’s stand together and fight—and let’s be sure to fight together, for as Ben Franklin said, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” There are no other options.

Ordinary barbarians of the world, unite!

(Adapted from a post on Conservatives4Palin)