By David Codrea
USA – -(Ammoland.com)- “The Joe Miller campaign for US Senate denounced the Murkowski campaign’s dirty tricks … after a Murkowski staffer entered Miller HQ to sign up as a volunteer,” a campaign press release announced. “The young staffer has been identified as David Nelson.
“This isn’t his first visit to Miller HQ, as Mr. Nelson showed up some weeks back to sign up for volunteer duties,” the release elaborates. “After his first visit, Nelson was seen entering Murkowski HQ, and his name was subsequently purged from the Miller campaign volunteer list.”
“We knew Lisa Murkowski supported the surveillance state, but we didn’t know she’d take it this far,” campaign manager Shawn Dow observed. “But it shouldn’t be surprising. Stands to reason that she’d campaign a lot like she governs.”
Dow called the Murkowski campaign, spoke with the man answering as Nelson and asked who put him up to it, at which point the staffer hung upon him without responding. A copy of that conversation was recorded.
“In September, a vehicle with an extensive amount of Miller’s campaign materials was mysteriously stolen and then torched,” Western Journalism reported Monday, citing a curiously coincidental criminal act with clear designs to thwart, intimidate, harass and harm Miller and his supporters. Nor is this the first time the Miller campaign has alleged evidence of the establishment-funded Murkowski using “dirty tricks” in its attempts to derail his grassroots challenge to the status quo.
“In 2010, Miller defeated Murkowski in the GOP primary, but Murkowski won the general election,” the Western Journalism report continues. “Murkowski staff worked with a local media outlet to fabricate stories about Miller, a plan that was exposed when parts of a conversation about the plan were inadvertently left on the voicemail of a Miller staff member.”
As AmmoLand Shooting Sports News reported last month, Miller, running on the Alaska Libertarian Party ticket, mounted his challenge after establishment Republicans ignored his 2010 primary win and financed a write-in campaign for Murkowski. Importantly, he has won the endorsement of Gun Owners of America after receiving a 100% score. GOA has given Murkowski a mediocre and unacceptable “C” rating based on a voting scorecard demonstrating the incumbent only agreed with GOA’s positions 69% of the time.
Also of importance, and of vital interest to all advocates of the right to keep and bear arms, Murkowski is rated “D” by immigration group Numbers USA, further compounded by failing marks on the all-important categories of “Oppose Amnesty … Limit Unnecessary Worker Visas [and] Reduce Total Immigration.” That’s of vital interest to defending the Second Amendment as evidenced by the Democrat Party’s, the Obama administration’s and the Hillary Clinton campaign’s push for a “pathway to citizenship,” and what that will mean for future legislative majorities and federal court appointments.
So while it’s unsurprising, it’s still disappointing that NRA disregarded all that and relied on a “hunting heritage” testimonial from an “avid outdoorsman” Safari Club bigwig as justification for their endorsement. (In 2010, NRA endorsed Murkowski in the primary, and then left Miller on his own in the general election.)
And in a curious twist, simultaneous with increasingly debunked allegations against Donald Trump being exploited by the Hillary Clinton campaign, Murkowski has joined with fellow Democrat-enabling RINOs to attack Trump, giving Clinton a pre-election boost.
As he now owes her (and much of the establishment Republican Party) no loyalty, to paraphrase his own question, what does Trump have to lose by reciprocating Joe Miller’s endorsement? Trump tried to play ball with the RNC by favoring embedded incumbents over principled conservatives like Paul Nelhlen and Kelli Ward, and has been “rewarded” for those political concessions by having Paul Ryan turn his back on him and receiving John McCain’s outright denunciation and abandonment.
A Trump endorsement for Miller now would go a huge way toward showing grassroots conservatives they don’t need to stand for a Republican Party that will take their desperation votes for granted while undermining their interests and selling out the Constitution. It would be a national headline-making addition to other prominent endorsements, and could make a tremendous 11th-hour difference in closing the shrinking gap between polling numbers in the remaining weeks before the election.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament.
In addition to being a field editor/columnist at GUNS Magazine and associate editor for Oath Keepers, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.