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Murkowski Lining Up An Independent Run?

08/26/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
Lost somewhere in the hype about the fact that Lisa Murkowski may have lost to Sarah Palin’s choice in the Republican Primary is the potential that she will chose to run as an independent.  This is actually becoming something of the story of this election cycle.  With Charlie Crist making the decision early to pull out of the Republican primary and run as an independent, the stage is already set for several establish candidates to run as independents instead of riding off into the sunset.  So far, the only incumbent who has not decided to run for reelection as an independent is Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania, who lost out to Joe Sestak.

Murkowski is probably considering her run carefully, and waiting until the official results are in to make any kind of official announcement.  Murkowski’s run could complicate matters for Joe Miller, Sarah Palin’s favorite.  Where as Crist may end up splitting both the Republican and Democratic votes, it is likely that Murkowski will only end up splitting the Republican vote and end up propelling Scott McAdams, the Democrat in the race, into the Senate.  Three way races are often hard to predict, as well.  A lot depends upon local conditions and local candidates.

Miller’s election does, however, show part of the true agenda of the Tea Party, or at least the core of it.  Rather than being a group which is only worried about economic issues and taxation, they are also strongly in favor of a repressive social agenda including making abortion under any circumstances illegal and banning same-sex marriage, and likely the rebanning of ‘homosexual acts’.  This has been seen before, though.  The Tea Party fueled social agenda has shown its ugly head in Texas, Virginia, and Arizona especially.  In Texas, the TX GOP adopted a platform which called for the recriminalization of homosexuality.  In Arizona, they have pursued an immigration law which not only violates the Constitution, but targets a specific group of people- Hispanics.  And in Virginia, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has pursued his own attacks on abortion by trying to make all abortion clinics into mini-hospitals, which is impossible to do monitarily, and trying to ban all rights for the LGBT Community.

A third party or independent run for office may be in Murkowski’s cards.  In truth, Alaska stands to lose a lot if Miller is elected.  Right now, Murkowski is very influential and able to get a lot of money back to her home state, which gets almost six dollars back for every one dollar it sends to Washington.

No matter what happens, the next two months will be interesting.