Weigel

Jim DeMint is oh-so-sort-of bucking up Joe Miller in his campaign to -- let's be honest -- disqualify as many ballots for Lisa Murkowski as it takes to win the Alaska Senate race.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and his Senate Conservatives Fund, which funneled several million dollars to Tea Party-backed Senate candidates this cycle, is ready to help Joe Miller fight Sen. Lisa Murkowski's high-flying legal team in Alaska. 

The political action committee is currently exploring exactly how it can assist Miller, the Republican nominee, on the fundraising front in what is expected to be a costly and drawn-out ballot-counting process.

Mike Huckabee, who came in for some (undeserved!) mockery for saying he deserved some credit for Miller's primary upset, is going a little further .

First of all, despite recent media reports, the ballots in this race are still coming in and being counted. Secondly, Joe expects that his campaign will be in legal battles over this irregular voting process for the foreseeable future.  He has asked if everyone receiving my email will consider a small online donation to his campaign to help fund these efforts. To make a donation directly to his campaign please click here.

This is great if all you want to do is announce your solidarity with the base, which considers Miller the latest conservative martyred by the wimpy establishment, especially after a local CBS station in Alaska disciplined reporters for discussing possible negative Miller stories, the conversation caught on tape. And if you boost Miller, you're declaring that you stand stronger with conservatives than Sarah Palin does, because she's not really saying anything about the race.

Of course, Palin knows Alaska politics better than Huckabee or DeMint and realizes that Miller is not winning . He is 13,000+ votes down to "write-in," and the best spin he has on his situation is that up to 6 percent of write-in votes could be disqualified -- something that would disqualify only around 6,000 votes. The trends from Alaska's voting districts show that she beat the fast-imploding Miller even in strong Republican areas like Fairbanks and the Mat-Su Valley. So DeMint and Huckabee are making fairly hopeless stands; in Huckabee's case, he wants supporters to donate some money to a hopeless stand.