My last diary on RedState was titled “Why I Support Joe Miller.”  Soon after that I went silent.

One of the rules here is that we don’t support a non Republican candidate, nor do we deprecate one of our candidates once they’ve been selected in the primary.  I reached a point where I could not support Miller any further, so I thought the right thing to do was go silent at that point.

Soon after that diary, things got really bad for the Miller campaign.  I imagine a lot of folks here were following it.  I’m sure you heard about the blogger getting handcuffed, the “I’m not talking” bit with the press, and all of the associated strangeness.  I was getting increasingly bothered by the lack of any positive action by the Miller campaign in response to all of this, and I know I expressed that in a couple of postings.  Nothing changed, and the campaign just got more and more bizzare.

There were two things that finally sent it over the top for me.  One was that his answers to *everything* became more and more Palinesque.  Nothing but vague generalities.  The second and most important thing was the admission of using other peoples computers at work.  The actual online poll thing is trivial, using others computers without their permission under their ip address, is unforgiveable.  You just don’t do it ..ever ..even once ..no matter what.  I’ve worked in I/T for twenty plus years, in everything from Fortune 50 companies and Big 8 consultancies, government, small business, and in any one of those places, bar none, someone who did that would have had security immediately escort them out of the building, never to return.  Doing something like that is like writing a book under someone elses name without their permission.  Reputation is everything.  I’ll say this, he must have been one hell of a lawyer to be able to just get away with a short suspension.  The kindest thing I can say about him is he clearly is unstable and has poor impulse control, the more likely is that he is an ethical reprobate.

None of this makes me feel great about voting for Lisa.  A lot of what we learned about her from all this hardly painted her or our state in a good light.  She clearly has a high sense of entitlement.  I imagine if as now seems likely,  she goes back to the Senate, she’ll become the third Maine twin.  She didn’t bother putting any energy into the primary and helped set up this bloodbath.  It’s hard to know what would have happened if she had not decided to run as a write in.  I can’t imagine McAdams doing the oppo research that Lisa did, but, as I’ve said before, this entire state is a small town.  We’re all no more than two or three degrees away from knowing everyone.  The stuff about Miller wasn’t real hard to find.  If it all came out, I think McAdams would have won.  By Election Day, Miller was probably the third most unpopular person in Alaskan history, after Jimmy Carter and Sarah Palin.  I imagine the Murkowski folks learned about most of this stuff between the end of the primary and the time she announced her write in.  We also learned that there is almost no constituency in this state for economic conservatism.  According to the pollster Dave Dittman, who had worked for Miller, and had a very accurate poll, said that Lisa had actually been ahead ever since she announced the write in.  Of course, that is easy to say now, but Dittman has always been an honest guy.  I suspect, though I have no verifiable evidence, that the vast majority of Miller’s support came because of his pro life stance.  Basically, we’re a liberal welfare state that is anti abortion and pro gun.   I think we’re really in for a rude awakening sooner rather than later.

We’re also in sad sad shape in the Alaska Republican Party.  I’ve spoken to a couple of the younger guys and am going to try and get more involved on the inside, precinct committes, etc.  We have to ..have to ..end this civil war.  We’re killing ourselves.  That Unity event never happened ..maybe once the ballots are finally counted, and emotions have cooled some, hopefully we can do something.

Though I’m not writing this as a commentary on the National Election (I think most of what can be said on that has been), I do think there are a few things that are relevant to the rest of the country:

It is very difficult (yet necessary) to sell economic conservatism to a population that has gotten used to being dependent.  Seeing how tough it is here, I have to imagine it is even tougher than the lower 48.  THAT has to be the next job of the Tea Party.  Invite friends to meetings and rallys.  Evangelize.  Understand that though we may not need to run “squishes”, that the majority of non political people are squishes.  That is not a put down, and we are lucky that, in a Center-Right country, the squishes lean Conservative, but you have to educate, and you have to make people realize that we are not “the other.”  Miller lost in large part because he actually did become a scary candidate, but the Tea Party had some great candidates in the Lower 48.  Many won, a few lost in impossible circumstances, and there were a couple of ..well …bad candidates.

Speaking of the Tea Party, this was all new this year and mistakes were made.  Having said that, on balance, it was the best thing to happen to the Republican Party this cycle.  Even an establishment doyenne like Peggy Noonan sees that.  Without the Tea Party, this is a mediocre boring mid term correction, with a lot fewer pickups in the House.  You can’t win without an energized base.  The next thing the folks in the various Tea Partys (gotta remember this isn’t one unified movement) need to do is start actually developing talent.  There were a couple of bad candidates this year.  I actually think Miller and O’Donnell were the only dishonest Tea Party endorsed candidates, a few others just seemed in over their heads.  Hopefully we’ve learned that just pissing off the left, or mouthing Constitutional platitudes, does not a solid or competitive or even trustworthy candidate make.  This was too new to actually vet candidates.  The best way to avoid that is by developing candidates from the base of people you know and trust.  I hope to never ..ever ..ever ..again, learn more about the candidate I’m supporting from opposition research, than I learn from the candidate or his campaign.  I hope most of you folks never have to either.  Fbks, if you are still out there, I’d love to know what you and the folks in Fairbanks think.

Speaking of squishes (again, not in the sense of political moderates, but in the sense of the non political public at large), it just is not a winning strategy to run against the “lamestream media.”  Look, I get it, you get it, we get it.  What happened to Miller up here was a media lynching of an uppity conservative.  OK, that is what they do.  We can b**ch about it till the end of time on our political blogs, but that doesn’t change it.  Angle and Miller both really blew it on that.  You have to talk to them, you can’t just speak in slogans, and you can’t be seen spitting on them.  They still have the louder megaphone.  It’s also impossible to have any privacy.  Yeah, everyone lies, everyone has skeletons in their closet.  You still have to assume that anything more than one person knows, will eventually get out there.  I don’t care if you don’t tell your wife, you had better tell your campaign manager, and be ready to deal.  (Actually you really should tell your wife, a stunned reaction from her doesn’t look good to the media either).  See previous comment about oppo research.

Obligatory Palin remark of course.  All I can say is, while I think Sarah’s effect on this race was way overstated at least in the General Election  (I don’t think she hurt or helped that much), this is an example of the type of divisiveness that a Palin run would bring.  I repeat, we cannot have a candidate that scares that non political middle.  You have to try looking at it from their point of view, not ours.  We can likely win with a very conservative candidate, if they don’t scare those folks.

Finally, here is a link to an article by Craig Medred in the Alaska Dispatch.  They were probably the main muckrackers in this race.  Their editor Tony Hopfinger is the guy that got handcuffed by Miller’s security team.  I think this ended up being a jihad for them and that they ended up getting obsessed.  Having said that,  this article is 100 pct true.

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/voices/medred/7383-if-only-joe-miller-had-been-what-he-said-he-was

This is something I posted in the comments section of adn.com (The website for the Anchorage Daily News).  I’ve been mulling things over a bit in the last 24 hours.  I have to admit the latest bomb (using boro computers to get rid of Ruedrich) really bothers me, but at the end of the day changes nothing.  I’m posting this to, share what may be going through some peoples minds here, but more importantly, hoping that, if someone on RedState is either part of the Miller campaign, or know people who are, that they get moving.  There is still no real pushback, and even that (admittedly great) commercial mentioned on here earlier has actually been running for a week or two.

AKSteveB 0 minutes ago in reply to SCGruhn

Look, the three choices at this point are

1) an entitled petulant middle of the roader who was too lazy to campaign in the primary. Without that sense of entitlement, she would have done the standard oppo research (it doesn’t take THAT much, this whole state is an overgrown gossipy small town), and Miller wouldn’t even be a factor. While I can’t know this, given her lack of party loyalty, she could either join the Dems, or more likely, join the Maine Girls and enable at least some of Obama’s agenda. As a fyi, I voted for her in the Primary. It is her behavior since then that has solidified my belief that the Tea Party was correct about her.

2) A (as far as I know) perfectly nice/honest standard issue Dem who Conservatives disagree with on pretty much everything. Just not an option for anyone not of the left.

3) A highly flawed, intelligent, eccentric Conservative running a terrible campaign. It is becoming clear the guy flat out doesn’t like playing by the rules, and he either breaks them, or at least works at the very edge of them.

The thing is ..he is the only conservative in the race. The other choices enable an agenda most of us find detestable, Murkowski to some extent, McAdams to the full extent. Also ..face it, he really is “us” at least in the sense of what brings a lot of outsiders to our state. Clearly he didn’t want a 9-5 job. Doesn’t play real well with others, and is a privacy nut. Willing to work the system in order to avoid the 9-5 life. Would tell an employer to shove it, if he wanted to do something he found more interesting (like elk hunting). Doesn’t suffer fools well, and given a likely very high IQ, I’m sure he finds a lot of fools out there (to his thinking), and if he thinks someone is a fool, doesn’t mind being dishonest with them.

He may turn out to be a total charlatan, but for conservatives, we have two absolute nos and one maybe.

Read more: http://www.adn.com/2010/10/13/1500580/borough-mayor-calls-miller-dishonest.html#disqus_thread#ixzz12MwC4iA7

This probably shouldn’t be a diary, but I’m not sure how else to do this.

I’ve been out of the country for a few weeks and haven’t posted much in a while.  I just wanted to say how exciting it has been to see the great work that the activist community and the grassroots have been doing fighting the government takeover of Health Care.  I’m honestly stunned at how effective it has been, I didn’t think we had much of a chance on this, and I realize it is far from over, but we at least have a chance of avoiding anything we won’t be able to fix later.  What is even better, having had a chance to watch at a bit of a distance, is that this is NOT being driven from the top.  “Astroturfing” my a**!  This has been our Senators and congresscritters and even a few of the Blue Dogs being pushed by YOU.

Once again, thank you all.

Even after 11 months of discussion, debate, and becoming the human representation of TMI folks still don’t understand  the disconnect between a national almost cultlike figure named Sarah Palin, and who and what she is as the governor of Alaska.  I’m not a political insider, just someone who the Chosen One pushed towards activism.  The issues on my end are policy and executive competence.  I’m not going to replay all that now, it doesn’t much matter, but at the end of the day, I don’t think she left the office in better shape than she started. Of course we can’t give a final grade until we see how the pipeline works out, but at this point I don’t see it happening.  Yes she personally lives her beliefs as what I’d call a “gut conservative” but pretty much everything else she did as governor before the call from McCain was popularity driven.  As I stated in another post, I think if she has a national future, it probably comes as a Buchanan/Perot thing.  Even in her quit speech, it was clear just how separate she is from the Republican mainstream.  Her political worldview to the extent it is developed, appears to be pure populist.  The Republican Party in Alaska is a disaster at this point.  I’m not exagerating when I say you have to plan carefully who sits where, since some people won’t sit together.  Gov Palin had to bring her own radio flack to introduce her at a Michael Reagan talk because she disliked the emcee of the event.  Sean Parnell is liked by most, bright, competent, has zero charisma (Don Young called him Captain Zero).  I think we’ll see a lot more Republican comity up here at least for awhile, and we need it.

On the national stuff, a pox on all their houses.  Even as a non Palin fan, the way the media treated her was unconscionable.  Yes we know politics is a bloodsport, but you destroy someone *politically* you don’t destroy them *personally.”  In a rational world, there are a few people out there that Todd would have had every right to beat the crap out of.  McCain used her.  She wasn’t ready for prime time and he knew it.  Staff started leaking stuff about her ..DURING THE ELECTION.  You just don’t do that.  I can’t think of another national candidate backstabbed by staff before voting day. 

She did bring a lot of this on herself.  A number of her advisers were already underqualified when she was mayor of Wasilla.  What in the world was she thinking when she helped feed the shark attack by talking to the tabloids????  Another negative is that to a large extent she was brought down by a couple of local bloggers in a version of the unpopular girls taking out the popular cheerleader in a catfight.  Now the dems have another weapon, we don’t play that game well, this age truly is the Revenge of the Nerds. 

The final piece of this has been her cult followers (and NO I’m NOT saying that every Palin supporter is a cultist).  Obviously we want votes wherever we can get them but the cultists just managed to make us look bad, sometimes fight amongst ourselves, and distract us from more important things.  Whatever break she is taking from politics ..Single issue Palinbots …PLEASE …find a new hobby!  Build a shrine to Michael Jackson.  Memorize 19th century baseball statistics become an expert in the Japanese game of Go (I especially recommend this one), just move on to whatever the inevitable next interest/fad/religion is.  If you can recruit a Ron Paul nut or two to go with you so much the better.  You will doing Republicans a favor, you will be doing sane conservatives a favor, you will even be doing Gov. Palin a favor.  At this rate it is a matter of time before some unrequited worshipper tries to pull a Mark David Chapman on her.

Josh Painter posted earlier about todays announcement of the agreement between TransCanada and Exxon to do pipeline preparation together.  I thought I would pass on an email to his constituents from Les Gara, the State House rep. from my district.  He is a Leftie Dem, (and a pretty strange guy), but his analysis on this issue makes sense to me. 

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Dear Neighbors,

           Today Exxon and TransCanada announced a joint agreement between those companies to do pipeline preparation work together.  The Governor’s Commissioners of Revenue and Natural Resources held a press conference supporting the agreement.  The Governor issued a press release.  OK, maybe I didn’t make that sound interesting – many on all sides are over-hyping the greatness/awfulness/positives/negatives of today’s announcement.  I’m not going to help them. 

           Here’s an early analysis I wrote on what the agreement means (http://alaskadispatch.com/tundra-talk/energy/1234-we-must-base-exxon-transcanada-proposal-on-merits-not-politics-).  It doesn’t mean there will be a pipeline tomorrow.  It doesn’t mean that Exxon, Conoco and British Petroleum won’t try to block a pipeline, or that they won’t support one.  Today’s announcement doesn’t answer any of those questions.  It does mean TransCanada is continuing to meet their commitments to the State of Alaska to move forward with planning this project, and to try to make it a reality.  But they were doing that already, on the schedule required by the law the Legislature passed last year.

So where are we?

           As has been the case since the Legislature issued TransCanada a license to plan and move ahead with a gas pipeline, the billion dollar question is this:  Will the major oil companies, which hold the leases to Alaska’s largest known reserves of natural gas, sell their gas into a gas pipeline? 

           The answer is this, as I’ve written in the past (http://www.newsminer.com/news/2009/may/23/gas-line-challenge-coming/?opinion).  This pipeline will move forward when the major oil companies commit to sell their gas to this project.  They have publicly stated – and Exxon subtly repeated this today during their press conference – that they will try to force tax and other financial concessions from the state in exchange for selling their gas.  If they demand unreasonable concessions, we either have to accept them, or resist them and, if that doesn’t work, threaten to sue.  

           They risk a lot if litigation occurs, as do we.  Under Alaska law, if they refuse to sell gas to an economic gas pipeline project, we likely have the right to cancel their North Slope leases for natural gas, and bid them to companies willing to sell gas into a pipeline.  They have what the law calls a “duty to produce”.  If we litigate, the state risks delay, and Exxon, Conoco and BP risk losing leases worth over $10 billion in future profit to them.  There’s risk for both sides if we litigate.  And, my guess is that as long as we stand strong, they will ultimately agree to sell their gas – their shareholders will demand it, and demand that they not risk losing billions of dollars worth of lease interests.

           So, what happened today?  Exxon agreed to help TransCanada pay for pipeline design, and preparation work.  Not much more.  Not much less.  It’s work TransCanada was obligated to do under the contract we signed with them last year.  It’s work that would have been done absent this agreement.  The more important information is in the tea leaves we are left to read.  Does this mean Exxon is willing to sell their gas, and Conoco and BP aren’t?  Have the oil companies developed conflicting interests?  Hard to know.  What we do know is that this agreement doesn’t change a lot on its face.  And we know all three companies will try to extract concessions from the state before next year’s “open season”, when they have to announce whether they’ll sell gas into a pipeline.

           One other thing.  Under Alaska law, TransCanada can, with state approval, sell an interest in the pipeline to any third party they want – PROVIDED they get state consent.  At this point TransCanada has not sold any of its interest in this project.  And if it does, I have been promised by TransCanada personnel dating back to 2008 that they are not interested in ever selling a majority stake to Exxon.  But if a sale occurs, we’ll have a raucous debate then.

           And we have to remember this.  Today’s agreement doesn’t change the law we passed in 2008.  Under the law, TransCanada’s pipeline has to allow for fair access by competing independent gas producers.  It has to allow for fair cost access to the pipeline so we can take gas off the line for Alaska’s communities.  It has to promote Alaska and union hire through a Project Labor Agreement.

           In the end, we need to read the terms of any agreement between TransCanada and Exxon to make sure the state’s interests are being protected.  We need to put aside the hype – by those who want to kill this project in favor of a competing Denali project owned by British Petroleum and Conoco.  We need to put aside the hype by the Governor’s national campaign supporters that this is somehow a deal-creating announcement.  We need to put aside the temptation by those who don’t like the Governor to criticize this agreement, out of dislike for the Governor’s politics or national ambitions.  That is, we need to put politics aside.  OK, one can dream. 

           The truth is that there will be lots of chatter about those from all sides, and from people with all sorts of agendas.  I only ask that you keep your eye on the prize.  What’s best to move a pipeline project forward?

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I w

this was not exactly a sparkling day for the Palin-Heath clan.

1) Todd’s half sister was arrested for 2 burglaries apparently with her 4 y/o daughter in tow.

2)  The Legislature has rejected her rejection of their rejection of Tim Grussendorf to take the place of Kim Elton.  Senate Pres. Gary Stevens (R-Kodiak) is supporting a lawsuit.

3)  Levi Johnston gave an interview to Tyra Banks, stating that he and Bristol “mostly” practiced safe sex, and that Sarah had to know they were having sex “Moms are pretty smart.”  There was some other dirty laundry as well, and Meg Stapleton is already out saying he was lying etc.

4)  She apparently missed another meeting with the Leg over the Stimulus package.  She stated in an interview with Anne Sutton of AP that the Leg. really controlled the pursestrings and that they wanted the money, the Leg. says her veto power is the final say.

5)  Though I don’t think it will really happen, there is actually growing noise about Ted Stevens running for Governor in 2010.  If he did, I don’t *think* Palin would have a chance in a primary.  How ironic would that be?

I wonder if the bloom is coming off the rose for anyone on the national scene.

I had posted this as a reply in another thread, but I think it was a… dead thread.

There was a big crowd. The introductions were done by alternating Lt. Governors, Lehman, and Parnell. Lehman wore the Lincoln Hat and gave the “Gettysburg Address intro” of Gov. He shouldn’t give up his day job. Both Don Young’s and Lisa Murkowski’s speeches were pre recorded, I thought both were quite good, Rep. Young was especially sharp. The old guy ain’t dead yet. Ralph Seekins did the auction stuff. As I’m sure you know, it is what he was born to do.

“I know Senator Stevens was not liked by many at RedState, but this is still a real sore spot up here, for good reason.

The headlines are gone, and MSNBC no longer cares. But that’s all the more reason to take note of the strange and disturbing turn in the Ted Stevens legal saga.

Prosecutors claimed this senior Senatorial scalp last year, winning an ethics conviction a fortnight before the octogenarian Republican narrowly lost his bid for a seventh term from Alaska. Though media interest stopped there, the story has since become one of ambitious prosecutors who at the very least botched the job and may have miscarried justice.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123509358392428915.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

“Mr. Stevens will try to overturn the verdict and rebuild his reputation. He is unlikely to get his Senate seat back, even if he wins on appeal or at retrial. But the evidence of prosecutorial malpractice is serious enough to warrant an internal Justice probe, and perhaps judicial sanctions.”

To my mind, nationally, this is the untold story of the last Election.  Even moreso than the Franken-Coleman mess.   That, much like Bush/Gore 2000 was essentially a tie, this was a manipulation of a race that otherwise wouldn’t even have been close.