Joe Miller's behavior doesn't change once Joe Miller leaves the lower forty-eight, either. Discounts on all sorts of goodies (handicapped hunting licenses and un-American unemployment insurance for the missis among other items) seem but the tip of the Joe Miller pip-squeak petty corruption iceberg. I'd bet he hasn't paid for a haircut in years.
It doesn't take a genius to ascertain Joe Miller's natural affinity for Sarah Palin and her Tea Party mythos. Quickly attaching himself to the ex-governor's (and wife of then best buddy "First Dude" Todd Palin) skirts and riding the Pro-Life, Anti-Gay wave for all it was worth, Joe Miller seemed unstoppable. Some aforementioned ethical glitches of course, but unstoppable nonetheless. His 2010 Republican Primary win over Murkowski just kicked in the point.
Unstoppable, perhaps, but disloyal as well. Finally "earning" the national airtime to pontificate on various issues it was perhaps inevitable Joe Miller would grow full of himself. So full, in fact, that he started forsaking old friends. Asked whether he endorsed his patron, Ms. Palin, for president in 2012, Joe Miller hemmed and hawed and, calculating the latest opinion polls, at last issued a statement of quasi-support as flat as his accent. "First Dude" Todd was pissed, but the furor seemed to pass quickly.
And the Joe Miller express just kept barreling forward.
Then the unthinkable happened: Joe Miller's very own "macaca moment". And he didn't have to say a word.
Why anyone in their right mind would hire an outfit like "Drop Zone" for security in the first place will forever elude me. They've got their corporate offices in an Army/Navy store fer chrissakes. What was Joe Miller thinking anyway? Perhaps he wasn't, at least it seemed like he wasn't.
Hell, watch the video. Handcuffing a reporter to a chair because he was asking Joe Miller uncomfortable questions? Talk about taking Sarah Palin's injunction to "keep it on FOX" literally. And while we're at it, where'd they find those particular "security guards" in the first place -- Central Casting ? Two baby soldiers (literally), amped-up boy scouts, really, freelancing sentry duty under the command of a guy who, well, let's just say in the company of children another adult need be present at all times.
Drop Zone indeed.
Welcome to Shmucksville, cowboy. Essentially reducing himself to a Fourth World dictator status -- the only thing missing were the Uzis -- on You Tube, Joe Miller wasn't so unstoppable anymore. His primary opponent, Murkowski, launched a write-in campaign (a kind of nutty versus nuttier) and started eviscerating him in the polls. The Democratic candidate dropped out shortly thereafter, having seemingly cut a deal with the traditional Republican camp for Joe Miller's head.
So Joe Miller's history, right? It's back to divorce law and playing army in the woods on weekends, you think? Back to sneaking joints of home-grown behind the snowmobile shed to stomach his wife's grandmother's moose stew recipe, huh? A veiled back-door return to that t*tty bar in Fairbanks perhaps?
Not likely.
After petulantly feuding with the press for a week or two, Joe Miller's finally taken the bull by the horns and sought out some professional help. He's found it in the person of Floyd Brown, a sort of scumbag's scumbag responsible for countless conservative atrocities like Willie Horton and Citizen's United. Bringing the rat aboard ship has already put Joe Miller back into the spotlight as he challenges every Murkowski write-in vote for irregularities as varied as spelling idiosyncrasies and cursive usage, claiming "voter fraud and suppression" while offering no proof and generally making a real pain-in-the-ass out of himself, on the Koch Brothers' dime no doubt.
And it kinda looks like he might just win after all.
We, as a country, need Joe Miller like we need a nationwide bed-bug infestation, and seeing how we've had the bed-bugs already, it's anybodies guess what's going to happen next. Joe Miller, and others like him (virtually every Republican currently in office to be precise), represent all that's wrong with this country, in hi-definition.
And it's not escaping extra-national notice, either. According to Christian Stoffaes, Chairman of the Center For International Prospective Studies, in a recent European talk "The United States is in disarray, extremely polarized. It is practically a civil war over there, and you can't count on it." And we want to put Joe Miller in power? Jesus... good point, Chris.
Of course the whole thing might turn out to be a bust, neatly depositing Joe Miller in destiny's dust bin. And good riddance. But the worst might yet come to pass -- Senator Joe Miller.
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