Academic

MURKOWSKI LEADS PORK REVOLT. I hope the Alaska Tea Party folks will give her the Ben Nelson treatme?

By Glenn Reynolds

MURKOWSKI LEADS PORK REVOLT. I hope the Alaska Tea Party folks will give her the Ben Nelson treatment whenever she returns to Alaska. Though I’m sure she’s more comfortable in D.C. anyway. But she should henceforth be referred to as Lisa “Porkowski” wherever she appears.

Meanwhile, reader Don Killmer writes to say that turnabout is fair play:

One (sad) result of the Bork confirmation hearings back during the Stone Age of American politics is the descriptive verbing of the proper noun Bork. This concept morphed into ?Borking? to refer to the use of political hit teams to derail senate confirmations.

Maybe its time for a new verb, as in: ?Lets Murkowski him/her?? This would refer to tactic of forcing a candidate to spend the time and money on a primary race in their own party, and then run against them anyway in the general election as a write-in or independent candidate. The irony is that this tactic would work better for Tea Party candidates than main stream republicans like Murkowski. Her situation is a fluke, but who?s to say this can?t become a legit tactic of slash and burn politics.

What really sucks here is that the Tea Party candidates could have run as independents and third party candidates. This would have split the tickets and then who knows how the election may have turned out. Instead, most of the Tea Party people played within the two-party system rules and won legitimate victories in their local primaries, and then party hacks like Murkowski turn around and run a sour grapes campaign as a write-in candidate.

At the very least, Murkowski should have her name associated with sore loser tactics by the verbing of her name in the same spirit as getting Borked.

Well, they said before that it would be the Tea Party candidates who would act like spoiled babies. But as Charlie Crist, Lisa Murkowski, Mike Castle, etc. demonstrate, it’s the establishment that thinks of itself first. No big surprise there, but keep reminding them. These folks live for ego as much as for power. Deny them those rewards at least.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on November 17, 2010 (boomark / email).