In the sense-of-entitlement race it's Murkowski vs. Crist

While 2010 is shaping up as the year of the conviction politician, the election is also throwing up candidates running on little more than their personal sense of entitlement. On that score, Lisa Murkowski is giving Florida's Charlie Crist a run for his money.

On Friday, Ms. Murkowski let it be known that she would conduct a write-in campaign for the Alaskan Senate seat against Joe Miller, the tea party favorite who toppled her fair and square in the Republican primary last month. Senate incumbents are always hard to beat, especially in a state like Alaska that has long rewarded seniority, and we assume voters understood the choice.

Though Ms. Murkowski heavily outspent the West Point grad, decorated veteran and federal magistrate, she said over the weekend on CNN that Mr. Miller had only prevailed because of "lies and fabrications and mischaracterization." She then denounced the "pretty radical things" that the Republican nominee supposedly supports, including "You know, we dump Social Security. No more Medicare. Let's get rid of the Department of Education. Elimination of all earmarks. You know, he is—he has taken an approach that is just, plain and simple, more radical than where the people of the state of Alaska are."

If Ms. Murkowski isn't taking orders from Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, it's hard to tell. The only result of this destructive and false message will be to cut the Republican odds of taking the Senate in November. The best Ms. Murkowski can personally hope for is splitting the GOP vote and throwing the election to Democrat Scott McAdams, the mayor of Sitka.

Eric Ostermeier of the University of Minnesota notes that despite Alaska's rich history of write-in campaigns, none has ever received more than 27% of the vote. Should Ms. Murkowski play the spoiler, Mr. McAdams would be the second unlikely liberal Alaska has sent to Washington in as many cycles. Mark Begich became the first Democrat elected to Congress since 1980 when he won the late Ted Stevens's Senate seat in 2008, and he went on to vote for the stimulus, ObamaCare and every other White House priority.

Mr. Begich was able to win largely because he ran against the Alaskan GOP establishment and its culture of spending as embodied by Stevens, Congressman Don Young and, well, the Murkowski family. Frank Murkowski originally installed his daughter in the Senate in 2002, a seat that he had held for 21 years before becoming Governor. You also don't have to squint to see in Ms. Murkowski's write-in campaign a certain dynastic vendetta against Sarah Palin, who endorsed Mr. Miller and deposed Mr. Murkowski in the 2006 gubernatorial primary.

Had she accepted defeat gracefully, Ms. Murkowski would probably find she could run for Governor in the future. Yet now she is burning her bridges to nowhere after being stripped of her Senate committee assignments by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Her incumbency and earmark themes failed to sway primary voters, and they betray a failure to grasp the country's anti-Washington mood. Voters want a check on the Obama agenda, not someone looking to trade votes for pork.