Color me a little confused. Lisa Murkowski responds to Jim DeMint’s accusation of being a “big-tent hypocrite” by claiming that DeMint doesn’t represent Alaska voters … which is certainly true. She also notes that Joe Miller only got the support of 11% or so of Alaskans in the primary election … which is more or less accurate, in that not everyone voted, and not every Alaskan is eligible to vote, and not every Alaskan is Republican, for that matter. However, what is also true is that whatever percentage of Alaskans voted for Miller, Murkowski wound up with a lower percentage of them in the primary. The issue here isn’t that DeMint somehow overrode the primary system, but that voters chose Miller rather than Murkowski. Isn’t that a representation of their values? Via Howard Kurtz:

“Where is everyone else in the middle?” Not engaged enough to vote in a primary, apparently. The rough calculation from Murkowski’s figures is that around 26% of Alaskans did vote in the primary — which is a pretty decent turnout, actually. Perhaps the real problem for Murkowski is that she didn’t inspire the mighty middle to come to the polls. That’s a problem she won’t solve in a write-in campaign.

DeMint gets the better of this argument. Murkowski was a member of the same GOP leadership that kept preaching to conservatives about the big tent, and then when it comes time to accept a conservative, suddenly Murkowski decides to run out of the tent and declare herself a victim of DeMint and California conservatives. Alaskans cast the votes, however, so the only one to blame for Murkowski’s failure is Murkowski herself.