Sarah Palin-it turns out-may have created the monster in Alaska that saves the Senate for the Dems
She Can See This Disaster From Her House
If Republicans lose the Alaska Senate race, they'll have Sarah Palin to thank.
Yet by an unusual arrangement of events, Miller is actually poised to seal Begich’s re-election, protect the Democrats’ Senate majority and prevent the repeal of Obamacare. And it’s all thanks to Sarah Palin.
The Begich campaign’s messaging is timely, disciplined and clever. Take, for example, his attacks on Treadwell, who hews more closely to the policy positions of George W. Bush on national security than to the Republican Party’s libertarian faction, which is particularly strong in Alaska. When Treadwell announced his candidacy in June 2013, Begich ran ads reminding Alaskans that he disliked the Patriot Act and opposed President Obama’s surveillance state. He has also smartly distanced himself from the president on gun control, another hot-button issue in Alaska, and Obamacare, where his line has been “let’s fix what is wrong, and keep what is right.” When asked in January if he’d want Obama to hit the trail on his behalf, Begich said, “I don’t need him campaigning for me, I need him to change some of his policies.”
Until this past year, when new chairman Peter Goldberg established calm, fratricidal bickering between Tea Party-style libertarians and everyone else has bedeviled the Alaskan Republican Party. Several chairmen have been ousted since 2010, and at one point the party leadership resembled the medieval papacy, with multiple claimants and no clear pope. The wounds from those intra-party fights are still fresh, and it’s not hard to imagine Miller launching an independent bid should he lose the primary, taking many of his Tea Party supporters with him. After all, “there’s a reason why the party bosses hate him and Washington fears him,” says the voiceover in one campaign ad. In the same clip, Miller says he is sending a message to “big-taxing, big-spending elites that the party is over.”
For the GOP, Miller’s run as an independent would likely be a disaster. In February, a Hays poll hypothetically pitted Begich, Sullivan and an independent Miller against each other (omitting Treadwell—a decision his campaign protested for “ignor[ing] the space-time continuum”), and found 45 percent for Begich, 33 percent for Sullivan and 10 percent for Miller—just enough to prevent a Republican victory.
Alaskans have not yet heard from Sarah Palin about Joe Miller’s candidacy this year, which is viable only because she endorsed him in 2010. But Miller, once left for dead on the political battlefield, is back in a big way. Incredible as it may seem, that endorsement is likely to haunt Republicans for years to come.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/04/how-sarah-palin-ruined-the-alaska-senate-race-105916_Page2.html#ixzz2zqXfyw2f
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