In Alaska's Joe Miller, Sarah Palin finds her Rocky Balboa

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No matter what happens next, former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is going to enjoy a shining moment in Joe Miller's come-from-behind victory, or near victory, in the Republican Senate primary. If not for the roar of the queen Mama Grizzly, how could anyone explain Miller coming from seemingly out of nowhere to rattle the throne of incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski?

Couple Miller's potential victory to the electoral anointment of Sean Parnell, the man Palin left in charge of the governor's office when she fled, and it's all a big score for the woman from Wasilla, even if Parnell did keep his predecessor at arm's length. Any standoffishness on Parnell's part is clearly overwhelmed by grizzly cub Miller's embrace of Palin in the closing days of a campaign that started off from nowhere and nothing only to end up on the edge of victory.

As this is written, Murkowski holds to only the thinnest hope that she can avoid ending up on the wrong end of a Don Young moment. Remember Young's comment to Parnell when the then-lieutenant governor jumped into the race for Congress in 2008: "I beat your dad, and I'm going to beat you.'' It's only slightly different for Palin this time around.

She beat Murkowski's father, Frank, for governor in 2006, and now Palin's Senate proxy has a 2,000-vote lead on Murkowski's daughter in the Senate race. More than 10,000 yet-to-be counted absentee ballots will finally determine the race, but only the truest of true-blue Lisa supporters think she can win. It's Palin payback time for Frank's decision to send his daughter to the Senate in his place instead of tapping Mama Grizzly.

In Palin's autobiography, her ghost writer described the scene when Palin realized she would not be going to Washington, D.C., like this:

"Well, it's not going to be me,'' I told (Todd), shaking off the cold inside the truck's warm cab, Governor Murkowkski kept repeating how tough it would be on the kids. But it will be interesting see who he picks. It's not going to be a woman with a family. Soon afterward Governor Murkowski made his big announcement. He'd chosen the 'most politically aligned Alaskan to replace him in the U.S. Senate,' he said. He then handed what was called the most coveted government job in the state to his daughter, Lisa a mom with two young kids.

Palin said she never harbored any resentment against Lisa for getting the job (even though Frank Murkowski aides have said she was upset), but when the chance came to run the Murkowski daughter out of office, Palin was there with all the glow of her national celebrity. And no one can argue that her support didn't help Miller.

Joe Who?

When he announced back in April that he was taking on the daughter of the former governor, he was the classic Joe Who, another lawyer from Outside looking to make a name in Alaska, a Yale Law School grad from Kansas who worked for a while in Anchorage before latching onto a government job as the state magistrate in Tok and eventually moving up to the job of U.S. magistrate judge in Fairbanks.