Image via WikipediaLisa Murkowski unleashed against Sarah Palin, other GOP foes - Alexander Burns - POLITICO.comAlaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, all but certified as the first successful write-in candidate for Senate in more than half a century, is poised to claim another distinction:
She’s the only national politician to fight Sarah Palin on her home turf and win.
Palin-endorsed Republican Joe Miller continues to challenge the outcome of the election in court, but Murkowski’s lead of more than 10,000 votes is expected to hold.
That means that in a year when numerous Republicans were cast aside by an angry party base, Murkowski will be the lone lawmaker who lost to a tea party- and Palin-backed challenger in a primary — but is returning to Washington anyway.
And like any good action-movie character mistakenly left for dead, Murkowski’s coming back with a vengeance, picking fights with Palin and the party’s activist wing.
She tore into Palin in an interview with CBS News last week, telling Katie Couric: “I just do not think that she has those leadership qualities, that intellectual curiosity that allows for building good and great policies.”
Her next target was South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, the tea party favorite whose PAC spent generously to support Miller in the general election. “I think some of the Republicans in the Congress feel pretty strongly that he and his actions potentially cost us the majority,” she told POLITICO during a visit to Washington.
Murkowski even told MSNBC that she was heartened by “good, strong showings of support, not only from my Republican colleagues but from my colleagues on the Democrat side of the aisle” — a comment that recalls Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman’s embrace of some conservative colleagues after his 2006 Democratic primary loss.
“I’m working for all Alaskans,” she said. “I’ve got to be working with everybody in the United States Senate.”
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