POLITICO: After several rough weeks on the campaign trail, a new poll out of Alaska shows Republican Joe Miller has fallen to last place in the three-way Senate race. A Hays Research Group poll released Thursday showed write-in candidates, presumably meaning Sen. Lisa Murkowski, in the lead with 34 percent, Democrat Scott McAdams with 29 percent and Miller with 23 percent. Murkowski is waging a write-in bid since losing the Republican primary to Miller. Miller’s plunge in the new poll comes on the heels of several misfires in the local and national press. Most recently, Miller’s employment records from his job as a part-time attorney with local government were unsealed Tuesday, in which he admitted to using company computers for political purposes and then lying about it. Until the Hays Research Poll was released, almost every public poll of the race since the Aug. 24 primary had shown Miller in the lead, with either Murkowski tied with or trialing him, and McAdams several points behind both candidates. MORE
TALKING POINTS MEMO: Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell has joined the ranks of Republicans who take a hard line with reporters when things go wrong — in this case, a local radio station in Delaware says, her campaign threatened to sue them if they posted an interview online. To watch the interview, click here. The fireworks begin a bit more than halfway through, when Jensen discussed O’Donnell attacks on Democratic nominee Chris Coons’s record as New Castle County Executive. Jensen pointed out the pluses of Coons’s leadership — the tax increases were fairly small in the face of a massive revenue shortfall after the subprime collapse, and he negotiated tough deals with the public employee unions — and asked O’Donnell what tax and spending decisions she would have done differently. O’Donnell became unable to give specifics at a certain point, and the subject became only more heated as callers continued asking, as well. O’Donnell repeatedly insisted that she was running for Senate, not for county council, while Jensen countered that she was criticizing Coons on the basis of his county performance. MORE
VIDEO: What The O’Donnell Campaign Didn’t Want You To See
HUFFINGTON POST: The “Countdown” host railed against the movement, using an analogy to call their candidates, “a group of unqualified, unstable individuals who will do what they are told, in exchange for money and power, and march this nation as far backward as they can get, backward to Jim Crow, or backward to the breadlines of the ’30s, or backward to hanging union organizers, or backward to the Trusts and the Robber Barons.” How strongly does Olbermann feel? He spent nearly 20 minutes on his harsh indictment of the tea party. MORE
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