She lost the Republican Senate primary in Alaska.
Infuriated, Senator Lisa Murkowski promptly decided to challenge the otherwise sure-winner, Joe Miller, in the general election. As a write-in candidate.
As this is written, she leads Miller by about 2,000 votes, with a court challenge still to come over whether Alaska vote counters must follow — gasp! — Alaska law on vote counting.
But for the sake of argument, let’s say Lisa Murkowski wins a narrow write-in vote.
Should the Republican Senate Caucus take her back?
Let her keep her seniority? Caucus with the party that she abandoned on a dime and whose nominee, duly nominated by Alaska Republicans, she went out of her way to trash and defeat?
The question should arise: why?
If Senator Murkowski rejects the Republican Party and is so all-fired to be the candidate of the “Write-In” Party — why shouldn’t she be booted from the GOP Senate Caucus and made to stick to her new-found principles? Why not just list her on Senate rolls not as a Republican but “Senator Murkowski (Write-In AK). She can be the Minority Leader and the Minority Whip of the Senate Write-In Caucus. Run her own meetings, caucus with herself — and shift to the absolute 100th rank in seniority since the other 99 Senators are affiliated with either the Republicans or the Democrats.
Unless, of course, Murkowski simply wants to admit that philosophically speaking she really is a liberal Democrat after all and see what deal Harry Reid has to offer.
Shouldn’t there be some consequence for what she did?
