You're not going to believe what happened this week. Just when I thought Republicans in Washington were beginning to get the message, they went back to business as usual.
As you know, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski lost the Republican primary to her conservative challenger, Joe Miller, in a fair fight. But instead of graciously conceding and endorsing the Republican nominee, Murkowski announced that she will continue her campaign as an independent write-in candidate.
Senate Republicans held a closed-door meeting Wednesday afternoon to elect someone to replace Senator Murkowski as the top Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Or so we thought.
Rather than taking away Murkowski's leadership position on the committee, Senate Republicans decided to let her keep it. One senator after another stood up to argue in favor of protecting her place on the committee — a position she will no doubt use in her campaign against Joe Miller, the conservative Republican nominee.
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It was bad enough to watch my colleagues work to support her in the primary after she had built a record of betraying conservatives principles. But watching them back her after she left the party and launched a campaign against the Republican nominee was more than I could bear.
I spoke out against the motion and I voted against it. But the good ol' boys' club, which always protects its own, prevailed. The motion was adopted by secret ballot and the final tally was not disclosed.
Keep in mind that I was attacked just last week by the Washington establishment for supporting Christine O'Donnell — a conservative — because they believe her nomination will hand the seat to a Democrat in Delaware. This week, however, that same establishment voted to help Lisa Murkowski — a moderate — defeat the Republican nominee, which could hand the seat to a Democrat in Alaska.
Marc Thiessen addressed this double standard in a column he wrote for the Washington Post on Tuesday, which you can read here. Here's an excerpt:
In that sense of entitlement, Murkowski is not alone. All last week, we heard the GOP establishment complain how the Tea Party is threatening Republican unity by pursuing "ideological purity" at the expense of a "big tent" party. But Tea Party-endorsed candidates are the ones who have stayed within the GOP tent. Rather than launching destructive third-party bids, fiscally conservative insurgents have contested GOP primaries — and when they have lost, they have endorsed their establishment opponents virtually without fail.
Contrast that with the record of the establishment candidates. When it became clear Charlie Crist would lose to Marco Rubio in Florida's Senate race, Crist bolted the GOP and decided to run as an independent. When Arlen Specter saw he would lose to Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania's Senate race, he became a Democrat. And, after losing the GOP nomination in Alaska, Murkowski is running as an independent write-in candidate. And yet, we are told that it is the Tea Party that is dividing the GOP and threatening party unity. For establishment candidates, unity seems to be a one-way street. The message to Tea Party activists across the country is: We want your votes but not your candidates.
The idea that DeMint and the Tea Party are threatening the GOP's chances for reclaiming the majority is absurd. Republicans wouldn't have a shot at taking back either the House or Senate were it not for the Tea Party movement, which has both energized the conservative base and attracted independents to the GOP by promising to reform the party and restore fiscal sanity in Washington. The best way to dispirit the conservative base and lose those independents would be to take back the majority and go back to business as usual. (
click here to read Thiessen's column)
Respectfully,
Jim DeMint
United States Senator
Chairman, Senate Conservatives Fund 
