Sen. Murkowski on Rydell - Vote For The Felon!

Alaska GOP politicians and apparatchiks will get increasingly desperate over the next six days, as they haplessly try to craft the message that inevitably will tie them to endorsing both corruption and anti-democratic tendencies in Alaska's political machinery.

One of many examples today was Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski's call to Rick Rydell's morning program on KENI-AM, at about 8:45 this morning. She asked people to put their morals aside, and vote for a convicted felon - Ted Stevens. (I know, I know, he isn't officially a felon until the end of his sentencing hearing, that may be delayed until after he is pardoned by W, which would essentially make him NOT A FELON)

But, in my estimation, Sen. Murkowski is committing the gravest public political error of her career in this move, and others she is bound to be making this week, in support of the "Vote for Ted" movement. Here are the reasons:

1) As a Roman Catholic, she is asking voters to commit a sin by doing a demonstrable wrong.

2) Ted is going to lose. Her endorsement of him, in the midst of national Senate GOP abandonment of Stevens, will gain her no creds among DC GOP stalwarts, come January.

3) She is giving her 2012 opponent in Alaska some very ripe fruit for the picking.

4) Any chances of helping Alaskans in the new January U.S. Senate will be considerably diminished by these actions.

5) The MP-3s and videos of her actions over the next few days will be used to document nationally why our state is the poster child of the most selfish entitlement politics in the entire country. Again, and again, and again.

This is sad, because I have a lot of respect for Sen. Murkowski. I suppose she is trapped into having to do this, but we shouldn't cut her any slack on this sick, slick move on her part.