DeMint, who raised $5.6 million to elect ultraconservatives this year, took special pains to back Republican Joe Miller in the Alaska election by attaching a CONTRIBUTE banner with a photo of Miller at the top of www.senateconservatives.com. Miller received more than $627,000 from DeMint’s efforts but still lost the election.

Lisa Murkowski, the senior Senator from Alaska and the senior Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, a vitally important post for oil-rich Alaska was punished by the Republican party for her votes against the GOP machine. The GOP elected Joe Miller in her place on the Republican ticket.

Faced without a party to back her, but enormously popular in Alaska, Murkowski went on the election trail promoting herself as a write-in candidate. She won by more than 2,000 votes.

DeMint was dealt another failure with his effort to remove Murkowski from the Senate committee as most of her Republican peers sided with her and preserved her position on the Committee. In addition, she was one of only two Republican Senators who voted to oppose a two-year moratorium on spending earmarks, DeMint’s signature issue.

In an angry email to conservative activists, DeMint said, “It was bad enough to watch my colleagues work to support her (Murkowski) in the primary after she had built a record of betraying conservative 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.”

Miller has demanded a recount and the Alaskan election board has stated it will do its best to honor the wishes of the voters who entered the name of a write-in candidate. Murkowski is not the easiest name to spell, but if the spelling comes anywhere close, they will honor it. Miller is suing to discount any name that has any departure from the actual, including ending the name with a “y” instead of an “i.”

The battle reveals the deep ideological struggle within the Republican party, between conservative hardliners who refuse to bend from their principles and moderates who say to make progress requires compromise.

Murkowski still intends to represent Alaska as a Republican. She returns to the Senate in an open war with DeMint and his conservative GOP allies, suggesting he is only out for his own initiative. In my opinion, she has them outnumbered.

She and other Republicans blame DeMint for costing Republicans control of the Senate by funding ultraconservatives that moderates could have won. Five incoming Senators who DeMint funded will increase his power in the Senate, but five ultraconservatives he funded lost where moderates might have won, and those would have put Republicans in the majority.