Have Alaska's Republicans gone mad?

Yeah, sure, it's not over yet. They'll be counting absentee ballots for weeks. But if Miller wins and Murkowski doesn't go third-party rogue, we Alaskans will get handed six years of junior status in an institution juiced almost entirely by rank. After all, longevity is what put the "Uncle" in front of "Ted" and helped build our state. The Democratic candidate, Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams, would at least be in the controlling party if he wins. But how much can a newly minted Republican senator accomplish with Democrats in the majority? Can you say "Write press releases"?

That's not the worst of it. Let's leave aside how Miller distorted Murkowski's record and statements during the campaign. Never mind his nimno right-wing boilerplate dismissing of the overwhelming evidence for human-triggered climate change and factual misstatements like "the trend in more recent years has been towards cooler temperatures." (It's not.)

Miller has publically embraced the same sort of loony constitutional fundamentalism that leads people to stockpile ammo and build bunkers in the black spruce. His campaign hammers on the need to scale back the federal government to "the constitutional powers anticipated by our Founders" without explaining how that might work.

So let's unpack this idea. What if we rolled back 223 years of pesky amendments and activist court opinions and simply rebooted the country with U.S. OS I?

First, Miller would need to quit wasting money on ads and start taking legislators to dinner. Our wig-topped Founders were spooked by the sweaty chaos and rude disorder of popular elections. In those days, U.S. senators were appointed by state legislatures in much the same spirit that countries now appoint ambassadors to the United Nations. Direct election of senators didn't begin until after states ratified the 17th Amendment in 1913.

Second, Miller's return to constitutional bedrock would devastate the home state economy. Under Article 1, Section 2 of the original document, Alaska's take of the non-defense federal pie would be cut by more than 99 percent -- from about $5.7 billion to about $4.8 million. It seems the unaltered constitution stipulated that all federal "direct Taxes" had to be distributed by Congress to states in proportion to their official census population.

How does this Founding Father funding formula pencil out? Alaska's official census population is just shy of 700,000 -- which is about 0.23 percent of the U.S. total of 307 million. To get Alaska's proportionate share of the federal pie, just multiply 0.0023 times the $2.1 trillion that the federal government collected in taxes recently. That's like trading 125,000 jobs -- about one-third of our state workforce -- for one freeway interchange decorated with aluminum yard art.

What other changes might we see from Miller's back-to-basics approach? Slavery wouldn't be prohibited, with any new slaves to be counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of congressional apportionment. Most Native Americans wouldn't be citizens or be allowed to vote.  Women wouldn't be voting either. These changes all meant tweaking the constitution in ways not intended by the framers.

Aside from the little constitutional snafus, Miller might need to clarify a few of his other positions too. In particular, he takes the common conservative "pro-life" stance against the right of women to choose to end a pregnancy. Not a surprise. But this stand doesn't jibe well with his particular notion of limiting the federal government only to powers "anticipated by our Founders."

Because abortion was not illegal in 18th century America. Nor was it limited in any way by the Constitution. Under the English common law observed in the fledgling United States, women had the right to end a pregnancy before fetal movement, or the "quickening." Sometimes even later. You could argue the Founding Fathers did not "anticipate" that any government, state or federal, would eventually try to intervene between a woman and her body. (Just don't let them vote.)