Alaska was considered a safe seat for the Republicans with Sen, Lisa Murkowski the incumbent running in the Primary against Joe Miller, a Tea Partier in the Sharon Angle vein. That was until Sarah Palin weighed in and threw her support behid Miller.
Miller won the primary by the slimmest of margins and will now face Democratic nominee Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams.
Miller supports the usual Tea Party wish list. Among his views: He wants to eliminate the Department of Education, believes the government shouldn't pay for unemployment insurance and says of climate change on his campaign site that it "may not even exist." Among the more mainstream GOP positions he's taken: Miller would cut welfare; eliminate health care for the poor by scrapping Medicaid; and the Anchorage Daily News reported that he has has called for sweeping cuts to Medicare and Social Security with a goal of phasing them out entirely in favor of total privatization which would mean handing over all of Social Security to Wall Street. If the average Joe actually realized that, the idea, floated by the Bush admistration for a while might now seem like such a good idea.
Most pundits still expect Miller to win in a state that is relatively reliably Republican but in an election where Kentucky and Nevada, both seats that were expected to be easy GOP wins, tea Party candidates have caused the races to tighten considerably.
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