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Sen. Lisa Murkowski, incumbent Republican, has lost her renomination bid to the Tea Party and Sarah Palin-backed Joe Miller:

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) conceded her primary race Tuesday night after she failed to close the gap on attorney Joe Miller in the ongoing vote-counting process.

Murkowski gained 199 votes on Tuesday, but she came up well shy of what she needs to win her party’s nomination.

With new votes tallied across the state, Murkowski cut her deficit, but she still trailed Miller by 1,469 votes after approximately 15,000 ballots were counted Tuesday. Another 10,000 or so are to be counted later.

By conceding, Murkowski becomes the third incumbent senator to lose re-nomination this year and the second to lose a primary. Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) lost a primary in April, while Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) fell at his party’s May convention.

Murkowski’s dad was the sitting governor who Sarah Palin beat, so there’s not a lot of love lost between those two Alaska political families.  For awhile there it looked like Murkowski might try a third party bid, but she seems to have given that up, and that’s good for everybody.

UPDATE:  Welcome Instapundit readers, and thanks Glenn!

UPDATE 2:  Larry Sabato adds this via Twitter:

AK SEN: With LisaM bowing out, Miller is R nominee. Likely R in Nov. Very doubtful McAdams(D) can beat Miller unless R self-destructs.

Sarah Palin adds this via Twitter:

Do you believe in miracles?! http://u.nu/72z2f Congratulations, @JoeWMiller! Thank you for your service, Sen. Murkowski. On to November!

John Hawkins is perhaps a little less gracious:

Sarah Palin blasted Lisa “RINO” Murkowski’s political career like it was a wolf running from her helicopter & I love it!

Both Bob Bennett, defeated in Utah earlier this year, and Murkowski whose Senate career effectively ends tonight, were part of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s inner circle. He’s gonna have to start looking for some conservative friends…or the conservatives will start looking for a new Minority…or possibly Majority…Leader.

Larry Sabato again:

Miller, Lee, Paul, Buck, Angle…Friends of Mitch McConnell, early Christmas gift idea: Case of Extra Strength Excedrin.

From Public Policy Polling:

Raleigh, N.C. – Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Huckabee continue to dominate the early field of potential Republican challengers to President Barack Obama, splitting 87% of the vote, with each getting between 21 and 23%.

Huckabee currently has 23% to Romney’s 22%, Gingrich and Palin at 21%, Ron Paul at
4%, and unnamed others at 2%, with 7% undecided.

And I’m not excited about any of them.

Clarus Research Group has the numbers a little bit differently:

A new nationwide survey of Republican voters finds that support for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to win the GOP’s 2012 presidential nomination has fallen by one-third since March, sliding from 18 points to 12 points. Palin is now running in fourth place for the nomination behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (26%), former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (21%), and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (14%).

Time for Mitch Daniels and Tim Pawlenty to get moving.

How powerful is Sarah Palin?  She can cause Democrats to resign without actually doing anything:

A New Hampshire state legislator resigned his office Thursday after becoming the second Democrat in as many days to speculate about Sarah Palin’s death on Facebook.

State Rep. Timothy Horrigan made the remarks Wednesday night in a thread discussing the Alaska plane crash that killed former Sen. Ted Stevens.

“Well a dead Palin wd be even more dangerous than a live one…she is all about her myth & if she was dead she cldn’t commit any more gaffes,” Horrigan wrote.

Horrigan was commenting on another post by a Democrat running for the state house, party activist Keith David Halloran, who found himself in hot water Wednesday after writing about the crash: “Just wish Sarah and Levy [sic] were on board.”

She’s really become kryptonite to these people.

Gateway Pundit has a trifecta of Dems gone wild stories that are worth reading:

• A “teacher” confronts Sarah Palin with the usual lefty rantings, but it turns out the “teacher” is actually just a theater tech and a singer in a drag queen band.  Democrats are appalled that Palin didn’t show proper respect to the “teacher” because she may have rolled her eyes.
• A Democrat candidate for Senate in Kentucky is sending supporters to rallies for the GOP candidate Rand Paul.  Those Democrats-in-disguise hold racist signs and pretend to be GOP supporters.
• The Democrat Mayor Pro-Tem of Kansas City confronts a GOP videographer at a Dem event and threatens to “knock the #### out of you, boy!”

They really are going crazy.

This might help Sarah Palin’s reality show, but it won’t help her political prospects:

When TLC showed footage of Sarah Palin’s Alaska to ad buyers and others in April, they laughed, and not in the good way. So it will be really interesting to see the reaction to the series now that Kate Gosselin and her kids are going to be featured on it.

I find Kate Gosselin to be one of the most supremely annoying people on the face of the earth. If she starts showing up in places with Sarah Palin, Palin’s political future is toast.

From Ace:

Oh No: Enquirer Claims Levi Johnston May Father A New Baby, And Not By Bristol

Sarah Palin should have him stuffed and mounted on the wall.

It’s screaming liberal moron weekend in Vegas and the angry lefties are angry at Democrats:

But as Netroots Nation, a conference of 2,100 liberal activists, opened here Thursday, it was clear that anger among some prominent progressives is still raw — and it could imperil some Democrats this fall.

Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos blog and an organizer of the first such annual conference five years ago, said he and his followers are disinclined to help Democratic candidates simply to preserve the party’s big majorities.

“There’s a lot of Democrats I’ll be happy to see go,” Moulitsas said in an interview. “I’ll celebrate when Blanche Lincoln is out of the Senate. There is a price to be paid for inaction and incompetence. We’re not getting much done with 59 [Democratic senators], so if we’re down to 54, who cares?”

… Moulitsas’s views were echoed by other progressive leaders who spoke on panels Thursday.

The panelists gave voice to lingering disappointment over Halter’s failed bid. Adam Green, a co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, had particularly harsh words for Bill Clinton, whose full-throated endorsement of Lincoln is credited with helping her win.

“It’s tough to see someone you’ve believed in betray you in a big way,” Green said of the former president. “We need to pick our heroes. . . . I think it would be sad if we went through this entire conference without calling out Bill Clinton for what he did.”

According to others who are there Sarah Palin has been the focus of much of the attention of the speakers. She clearly scares them half to death.

Again, not surprising in the least given the liberal media members who were involved:

In the hours after Sen. John McCain announced his choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate in the last presidential race, members of an online forum called Journolist struggled to make sense of the pick. Many of them were liberal reporters, and in some cases their comments reflected a journalist’s instinct to figure out the meaning of a story.

But in many other exchanges, the Journolisters clearly had another, more partisan goal in mind: to formulate the most effective talking points in order to defeat Palin and McCain and help elect Barack Obama president. The tone was more campaign headquarters than newsroom.

The conversation began with a debate over how best to attack Sarah Palin. “Honestly, this pick reeks of desperation,” wrote Michael Cohen of the New America Foundation in the minutes after the news became public. “How can anyone logically argue that Sarah Pallin [sic], a one-term governor of Alaska, is qualified to be President of the United States? Train wreck, thy name is Sarah Pallin.”

Not a wise argument, responded Jonathan Stein, a reporter for Mother Jones. If McCain were asked about Palin’s inexperience, he could simply point to then candidate Barack Obama’s similarly thin resume. “Q: Sen. McCain, given Gov. Palin’s paltry experience, how is she qualified to be commander in chief?,” Stein asked hypothetically. “A: Well, she has much experience as the Democratic nominee.”

“What a joke,” added Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker. “I always thought that some part of McCain doesn’t want to be president, and this choice proves my point. Welcome back, Admiral Stockdale.”

You can read the ugly details in the rest of the piece.

Journolisters are now being shamed into making public admissions of membership in the group and the occasional non-apology apology.  The NPR producer Sarah Spitz who posted about wanting to watch Rush Limbaugh die has issued the classic “I apologize to anyone who was offended” BS non-apology that really just says “I don’t think I did anything wrong but some of you morons out there were offended, so here’s your little insincere apology”.  Of course, she did not offer an apology to Rush Limbaugh, the only person who deserved one from her.  Her non-apology has not made her any less despicable.  Look for more of this kind of stuff in the coming days.

The Daily Caller now has Journolisters running for cover.  It’s fun to watch.

Yes, it’s pretty meaningless at this point in the process but it can tell us something about the mood of the electorate.  From PPP:

(Obama) trails Mitt Romney 46-43, Mike Huckabee 47-45, Newt Gingrich 46-45, and is even tied with Sarah Palin at 46. The only person tested he leads is Jan Brewer, who doesn’t have particularly high name recognition on the national level at this point. . . .

There are two things driving these strong poll numbers for the Republican candidates. The first is a lead with independents in every match up. Romney leads 48-35 with them, Gingrich is up 50-39, Huckabee has a 46-40 advantage, Palin’s up 47-42, and even Brewer has a 38-37 edge.

The independents put Obama in office, and they can take him out.

Her appearance in Turlock last week netted Cal State Stanislaus $200,000:

Sarah Palin spent only a few hours in Turlock. But the repercussions of her visit will last a long time, from the big money she drew to the debate over her appearance to a legal investigation into the nonprofit foundation that signed her.

Officials of California State University, Stanislaus, said they couldn’t be happier with her appearance at the 50th anniversary gala, bringing in the most money of any event in campus history.

“I am really very pleased,” university President Hamid Shirvani said Saturday. “It was an extraordinary event, unprecedented in the past five years I’ve been associated with the university, and according to many, unprecedented as long as they have been with the university.”

Stanislaus County Supervisor Vito Chiesa, who attended the gala, said the university achieved its goal.

“I think they hit a home run for raising money,” he said. Officials estimated net income at $200,000. “I didn’t know what all the rancor was about before; she’s there for a school and she turned it into an educational speech.”

There’s quite a few schools in the Cal State and University of California systems. Perhaps the state needs to hire her to speak and all the schools some some of those smarmy students who protested might be able to get a reduction in their tuitions.