Mr. Smith Goes to Anchorage

By GAIL COLLINS
NYT

ANCHORAGE

Autumn in Alaska. Leaves are falling. Glaciers are melting. The walruses have abandoned their vanishing ice floes and are piled up along the coast in a formation that is apparently not dangerous, unless one rolls over at the wrong time.

We do not generally compare Republicans to walruses, but things are unusually crowded in that quarter, too. The Alaskan Republican Party expected to float to an uneventful victory in November with its incumbent senator, Lisa Murkowski. Then she got dumped in the primary by Joe Miller, a Tea Party candidate who wants to eliminate everything federal — from the Department of Agriculture to the student loan program.

Taxpayer rage has, of course, been the rule in Republican primaries lately. But it was hard to predict that the fury would spread to a state that has virtually no taxes.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader who is looking like an endangered species himself lately, threw in with Miller and announced that Murkowski should “move on.” But where can she go? She’s already in Alaska.

(More here.)