Sorry about the delay in posting my column early this morning, but today is the first day of school for my middle school child, plus there were some computer glitches this morning.

The results are still coming in for the U.S. Senate Republican primary in Alaska, but it’s not looking too good for U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski.

As I am writing this commentary, she trails Joe Miller by about 1960 votes with 429 of 438 precincts reporting. According to some reports in Alaska, there were about 16,000 absentee ballots sent out and only about 7,600 have been returned, plus some of the rural votes have not been counted yet. It may be a week or so before we know the winner. Supposedly, Alaska has until September 8 to count all the votes.

Murkowski was targeted by the Tea Party as not being conservative enough for their liking – probably for the same old worn-out campaign theme: abortion. Murkowski is pro-choice.

The darlings of the Tea Party (Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee) did robo-calls for Miller and the Tea Party pumped in $600,000 for ads against Murkowski – which buys a lot of time on the airways in Alaska.

It’s interesting (not to mention, funny) to see the GOP implode, which this writer believes they are doing because of the RINO (Republican In Name Only) syndrome. I’ve written about it before, but it’s worth repeating that some of these far righties would rather elect a Democrat than elect a moderate Republican.

Of course, some in the GOP call this pruning the branches. The State and National GOP have to sit back and kind of say, “Please sir, may I have another” as they are tied to the Tea Party folks if they hope to win back the Senate and House and maybe the White House in 2010 and 2012 – that is if the Tea Party movement continues that long.

Murkowski was appointed by her father, Frank, who became Governor after quitting as U.S. Senator to become Governor. That was in 2002 and many Alaskans did not like it. She ran for the full term in 2004 and beat her opponent by about 9,500 votes.

I’ve heard from sources that Murkowski was not a strong campaigner and kind of had the “I deserve this office” or “princess” attitude. But that was back in mid 2000s.

Reports say that former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens did some campaign commercials for Murkowski, but those were not used due to his recent death. That’s a decision that the Murkowski campaign may regret.

So this race may be a long way from being over. It will be fun to watch.