Last week, Senator Jim DeMint said the following regarding the stakes between Ted Cruz and David Dewhurst in the Texas Senate race: “A Republican majority is pointless if it isn’t achieved w/ conservatives who will fight to stop the spending and debt.”  His comments cannot be more oracular.

If we win back control over the Senate, yet keep the same leadership intact, we will be fighting the same battles against statists in our own party next year.  While it will be an uphill battle to take out McConnell from the top spot (someone needs to actively run against him), we must begin working against some potential committee chairmen.  One such individual is a Republican-In-Name-Only in the true sense of the label – Lisa Murkowski.

Today, Murkowski had this to say about the need to retain the Solyndra-style green energy loan programs within the Department of Energy:

“Unfortunately what we have seen this past year with some of the failures within the loan guarantee program, it has tainted, I think, that whole program to the point where some are suggesting the plug just needs to be pulled,” Murkowski said in remarks at a forum hosted by George Washington University and the firm Arent Fox.

“I don’t think that is the case, I think we need to make sure that the loan guarantee program operates as Congress had intended.”

Even though these comments reflect Obama’s view on the Solyndra program verbatim, they are actually coming from the next in line to be Chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee!

There is nothing more important than preserving the Republican Party as the unabashed force for free market energy policy.  Free markets are the life blood of a free and prosperous society and energy is the life blood of the free market.  We must get this issue right and we must provide a bold contrast between ourselves and the Democrats.  By appointing this supporter of green venture-socialism to the most important energy-related position, we will, once again, be subjected to a rudderless Republican majority in the Senate.

Just say no to Lisa Murkowski as Chair of the  Energy and Natural Resources Committee .  It would also be nice to throw out the man who allowed her to keep her seniority on the committee for good measure.