Alaska-- Still Here: Will Palin Move To Oust Murkowski?

Watch for sharp, deadly objects that can be used to gut a moose

At a time his Senate cronies are making the case that of course the saintly dedicated public servant Ted Stevens absolutely must get a pardon, even without having to stoop to ask for one, Alaska's other (somewhat less) crooked U.S. Senator is worried that her own seat may be in jeopardy. But in red, red Alaska where it takes no less than 7 criminal convictions to dislodge a corrupt Republican-- and even then only by the barest of margins (150,728 to 147,004 or 48-47%)-- it isn't any Democrat Murkowski has to worry about, assuming-- although why, I have no idea-- she isn't indicted as part of the Alaska GOP corruption cavalcade. What Murkowski has become acutely aware of is that the biggest danger she faces is from a barracuda from inside her own party.

Just now Sarah Palin has found yet another excuse to get out of Alaska and is running around Georgia exhorting red necks to get out to vote today so that Saxby Chamberpot can filibuster and obstruct everything President Obama tries to do to bring change and progress to America. When Ted Kennedy spoke at Harvard yesterday, he quoted his brother John F Kennedy: "If by a liberal, they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind ... someone who cares about the welfare of the people-- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights ... then I am proud to say I am a liberal." Neither Palin nor Chamberpot, each of whom espouses selfish and reactionary policies across the board, could ever lay claim to that kind of legacy. And, of course, neither can Murkowski.

Today Murkowski's claws were out over Palin and she warned her to not try a primary stunt to get into the Senate on the way to a White House run. “I can guarantee it would be a very tough election... If she wants to be president, I don’t think the way to the presidency is a short stop in the United States Senate," growled Murkowski, whose father was even more corrupt than Ted Stevens-- and who Palin beat in a gubernatorial primary when he ran for a second term.

As Murkowski’s tense talk suggests, the politics between the two women is personal. Palin won the governor’s race in 2006 by defeating Frank Murkowski, the senator’s father. On the presidential campaign trail this year, Palin crowed about upending the “old boys network” in Alaska.

When asked this summer about Palin’s suggestion that her father was one of those “old boys,” Murkowski bristled and cut an interview short.

Murkowski is widely considered the lightest among Republican Senate featherweights and she won her Senate seat with less than 50% of the vote. Meanwhile, while most Americans view Sarah Palin as a cross between a joke and a nightmare, Alaska Republicans are bonkers over her. If she challenged Murkowski, it wouldn't even be a contest. Murkowski has taken the stance of a mainstream conservative, which doesn't sit well with the extremists and Know Nothings Palin represents. Along with Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Arlen Specter, George Voinovich, and Richard Lugar, she's viewed as one of the only Republicans refusing to further wreck the country by sabotaging Obama's agenda. If she's too cooperative, the hue and cry from the Know Nothings for Palin to run against her will be... compelling.