The latest reports out of the battle for the Republican nomination to the U. S. Senate from Alaska has incumbent Lisa Murkowski trailing unknown Joe Miller.

Incumbent GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski was thought to be a big favorite coming into Tuesday's primary against Sarah Palin-backed challenger Joe Miller. But with over half the vote in, Miller holds a slight lead over the incumbent, 52 to 48 percent with a little over 2,000 votes separating the two.

Given Alaska's far flung population, Murkowski could still pull ahead.

But the fact that Miller's is at the very least putting up a stiff fight is enormous testimony to the power of Sarah Palin.

Because of Sarah Palin's support, Joe Miller is a player. Without her support, he's just another clueless wing nut who wants to invade Canada over socialized medicine.

And Palin didn't have to do much to put Miller in this position.

If I remember right, Palin put up a couple of posts on facebook and recorded a robocall on Miller's behalf.  That sounds like about an hour of effort.  I don't think Palin either made any public appearances with Miller or traveled with him around the state.

Of course, Sarah Palin is not exactly known for her work ethic and here she barely lifted a finger for Miller.

But Palin's token efforts still put Miller into play.

This all reminds me of a comment I remember about Ben Franklin's attempt to change Pennsylvania from a proprietorship to a royal colony in the 1750's. Franklin wanted to end the proprietorship in order to eliminate the influence of the Penn family on Pennsylvania affairs.

But one of Franklin's opponents claimed something to the effect that "the little finger of the king has more weight than the loins of the proprietor."

It turns out that Sarah Palin's little finger has real weight as well.