Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is being credited with inventing a new word, "refudiate," that will be included in the next New Oxford American dictionary. It is a great irony that the first person to successfully put that word into action is U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski(R-AK) -- and the victim is Sarah Palin.
Apparently family feuds don't take place in just Texas or the Deep South. Over the past five years there had been an ongoing family feud between Ms. Palin and the late Senator Ted Stevens. Eventually the feud spilled over to Palin against Lisa Murkowsi, a protégé of the late senator.
When it came time for the Senator to seek re-election Sarah Plain endorsed Tea party favorite Joe Miller and helped him win the Republican Party primary. When Senator Murkowski recovered from the shock of being denied her party endorsement she did a little soul searching and polling and found out that the majority of the voters in Alaska still liked her.
Feeling she had a rightful claim to the Senate seat and confident that she could wage a battle to reclaim it, Murkowski announced she would run as a write-in candidate. So as not to embarrass her colleagues in the Senate, Murkowski gave up one of her political titles and plunged into the campaign.
Before the Alaska Senator got to Washington to read her constituent mail, the Republican leadership stripped her of her leadership position and tried to send her to the dustbin of Washington history. Apparently Murkowski is also a Mama Grizzly, and she set out to run a historic write-in campaign for her old seat.
In places like Alaska, as in most places, it's hard to get people off their couches to the polls to cast a traditional vote. Asking people to write in 'MURKOWSKI' correctly is almost impossible, or so the political pundits thought. Long story short, Murkowski has become only the second person in the past 50 years to win a U.S. Senate seat by a write-in, thereby refudiating Palin.
But the story isn't over. At some time in the next year or so Sarah Palin may decide that she will seek her party's nomination for president. While she is mulling over her future many of the same people who shunned Murkowski will be plotting to sabotage a Palin campaign.
The worst kept secret in Washington these days is that future White House candidates like Romney, Huckabee, Pawlenty and their backers are planning and plotting on ways to stop her from becoming the party's nominee in 2012. There are meetings galore going on in country clubs where the only subject is stopping Sarah.
While the establishment is trying to figure out how to derail a Palin campaign, the former Senator from Alaska is laughing all the way to the bank. She is said to be getting $250,000 an episode for her Alaska travelogue on cable television. In addition she is hogging the media with daughter Bristol on Dancing With the Stars and gaining new press attention with her vocabulary.
So for now the lesson learned is that the word refudiate can be used by people other than Sarah Palin, and Lisa Murkowski is the winner in the political spelling bee. Senator Murkowski can now join the fledgling group opposing the Palin candidacy whose rallying cry for Sarah Palin may be "what goes around comes around."