Back in July, when he was in the midst of a fierce primary battle with Sen. Lisa Murkowkski (R-AK), tea party candidate Joe Miller railed against the concept of unemployment benefits. “The unemployment compensation benefits have gotten — first of all, it’s not constitutionally authorized,” he said. After he secured the nomination, Miller continued with this theme, falsely suggesting that Medicare and Social Security are both unconstitutional as well.

When journalists pressed Miller to expound on his Medicare and Social Security statements, the Tea Party favorite seemed reluctant to go into detail. Now, it seems that Miller is backtracking from his position on unemployment benefits as well. Yesterday on CNN, when host John King noted his previous claim, Miller danced around the question but ultimately said it’s extending the benefits that is the problem, not the benefits themselves:

KING: Now you have said you believe extending unemployment benefits and federal unemployment benefits are unconstitutional.

MILLER: Let me tell you why. The Democratic Party and even the votes that many of which Murkowski voted in support of the Democratic Party is not the answer to putting people back to work. And as long as the federal government stays on the back of the American worker by too much regulation, by creating an anti-competitive atmosphere, by taxation, we absolutely are going to maintain the unemployment benefits so that workers can continue to be where they need to be but long term there has to be a transition there, too. … Why we’re talking about expanding unemployment compensation for a much longer period than what had been done in the past?

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Miller also hinted that his position was shifting on unemployment benefits during an interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace this weekend. When Wallace asked repeatedly (without an answer) how he would help the nation’s poor if he believes unemployment is unconstitutional, Miller said, “We have an extension of unemployment benefits several weeks ago, which is beyond what we had in the past in this country,” adding, “What we have in this country is an entitlement mentality.”

This morning, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace asked Alaska Republican senatorial candidate Joe Miller about recent data from the Census Bureau which found that a stagering one in seven or 43.6 million Americans are living in poverty, the highest level since 1994. Noting that Miller had previously claimed that unemployment benefits were unconstitutional Wallace asked, “without unemployment benefits, a lot more, millions more would be living in poverty — what would you do for them?” Miller initially ducked the question, but when Wallace persisted, Miller accused Americans of suffering from an “entitlement mentality” and argued that providing unemployment benefits was not among Congress’ enumerated powers:

MILLER: I think the question is what is the role of the federal government? Right now, we’ve grown the federal government to such a size that we have what, I think in absolute terms now, $13.4 trillion in debt if you look at the future unfunded obligations, which a lot of those are the entitlement programs, by some estimates $130 trillion. That’s unsustainable. That’s just the facts. [...]

WALLACE: But Mr. Miller, if I may, I’m not sure you answered my question. Why are unemployment benefits unconstitutional and in a time of a tough economy, a recession, a now a kind of jobless economy, what are you going to do for the 44 million people who are living in poverty?

MILLER: I think what you need to look at is the context. We have an extension of unemployment benefits several weeks ago, which is beyond what we had in the past in this country. What we have in this country is an entitlement mentality. It’s an entitlement, not just as individual but even at the state level… everything that fails the government should be involved in bailing out. And the constitution provides enumerated powers. And I guess my challenge is to anybody that ask, show me the enumerated power. And then look at what the tenth amendment that says if it’s not in the constitution, it’s a power that belongs to the state and the people.

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Miller’s radical tenther views aside, unemployment benefits have become essential in today’s economic climate and have kept millions of American families out of poverty. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities’s (CBPP) Arloc Sherman has analyzed the latest Census numbers and found that unemployment insurance kept 3.3 million Americans out of poverty in 2009. “In other words, there were 43.6 million Americans whose families were below the poverty line in 2009, according to the official poverty statistics, which count jobless benefits as part of families’ income. But if you don’t count jobless benefits, 46.9 million Americans were poor,” the Center concluded.

Miller may have the most extreme views on unemployment benefits but as Zaid Jilani notes, he’s not the only conservative to strongly oppose extending the benefit. Republicans in the Senate have repeatedly locked arms to block extending the benefits for unemployed Americans, putting the wellbeing of jobless people in peril. And as the Wonk Room’s Pat Garofalo notes, a major chunk of 2009’s unemployment benefits were funded by the stimulus bill, which “House Republicans unanimously opposed.”

Yesterday on CBS’s Face the Nation, Alaska GOP U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller suggested that both Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional. When Bob Schieffer wondered whether Miller’s ideas — that Social Security should be privatized and that Medicare should be phased out — were too extreme, Miller shot back, citing the Constitution. “I would suggest to you that if one thinks that the Constitution is extreme then you’d also think the Founders are extreme,” he said.

Today on ABC’s Top Line, host Rick Klein asked Miller to expound. “Do you think those programs are constitutionally authorized?” Miller dodged, first — noting that his parents benefit from Social Security and Medicare — arguing that they should be preserved now, but “transition” to a privatization model in the future. Then, Miller again suggested the programs are not constitutional:

MILLER: I think we have to look at transferring power back to the states in such a way that states can then look at solutions that may be more appropriate. Then ultimately, when you look at the Constitution and you evaluate what the plan was originally, it was for states to take on more power than the federal government, particularly in the areas of, such as those things that may promote the general welfare. It was not a federal role.

Later on MSNBC, host Andrea Mitchell asked if Social Security and Medicare are “legal” and “should be mandated” by Congress and again, Miller dodged, saying, “I do believe that the Constitution mandates that we transfer power from the feds back to the states.” Watch the compilation:

Miller’s claim that the Constitution gives states the sole power to provide for general welfare is exactly wrong. In fact, Article I, Section 8 specifically states:

“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”

Miller appears to be embracing what the Wonk Room’s Ian Millhiser describes as “tentherism,” the belief adopted by many on the right that posits that progressive policies such as health care reform and entitlement programs are an unconstitutional infringement on states’ rights.

Last month, Alaska GOP U.S. Senate candidate and Tea Party favorite Joe Miller said that unemployment benefits are unconstitutional. “The unemployment compensation benefits have gotten — first of all, it’s not constitutionally authorized,” he said, adding, “I think that’s the first thing that’s gotta be looked at.”

Today on CBS’ Face the Nation, Miller — who is currently ahead of incumbent Lisa Murkowski in the state’s U.S. Senate GOP primary — went a bit further. Host Bob Schieffer noted that Miller wants to privatize Social Security and phase out Medicare and wondered whether those positions were a bit extreme. But Miller didn’t think so, suggesting that the U.S. Constitution supports his view:

MILLER: Well, yeah I would suggest to you that if one thinks that the Constitution is extreme then you’d also think the Founders are extreme. We just simply want to get back to basics, restore essentially the constitutional foundation of the country and that means the federal government becoming less onerous, less involved than every basically item of our lives and what that means is there does have to be some transition. [...]

We have to look at all the options that are out there, including privatization [of Social Security]. It’s certainly something that Bush championed…it is basically part of the crisis of leadership in DC to not look at Social Security and understand that there has got to be a solution posed.

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Miller’s views on global warming are also “very extreme.” Last week, he told a local Alaska newspaper that he does not believe that human activity is contributing to climate change (despite overwhelming evidence finding that it has). “We know the temperature change is part of the process of our existence,” he said, but “we haven’t heard there’s man-made global warming.”

In May, the tea party movement successfully toppled long-time Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT) in a wave of anti-establishment sentiment that is “altering the nation’s political landscape.” This tea party tide carried Trey Gowdy to victory over the “reasonable Republican” Rep. Bob Inglis (SC) and now may push tea-party-backed Senate candidate Joe Miller (R-AK) to a win over current Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) in “one of the biggest political upsets of the year.” As President Bush’s former speechwriter Michael Gerson points out today, the Republican party now faces an uphill struggle to rein in the “untested ideology” of these new candidates that is “clearly incompatible with some conservative and Republican beliefs” and may prove “toxic to the GOP.”

But Gerson’s concerns are falling on deaf ears at the Republican National Committee. Today on ABC’s Top Line, RNC spokesman Doug Heye enthusiastically embraced the radical views of GOP candidates like Miller. In opening the discussion between Heye and DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse, Top Line host Jonathan Karl “wanted to see how excited” Heye was about “[his] man” Miller. He aired a previous interview on Top Line in which Miller said unemployment extension benefits are “not constitutionally authorized. I think that’s the first thing that’s got to be looked at so I do not favor their extension.” When Karl asked whether Heye embraces that view, Heye responded “we embrace whatever candidate needs to do to win”:

KARL: Ok, so you have a candidate who thinks that unemployment extension is not constitutionality authorized…uh…First of all, do you embrace that?

HEYE: Well we embrace whatever candidate needs to do to win. Every candidate campaigns in a different manner, every governor is a different governor, every senator is a different senator. But we look for candidates who can win.

KARL: Is that a mainstream Republican position that can win?

HEYE: Its certainly one that we have a lot of people in this party who have talked about. And certainly the Constitution is a key talking point for our party, it’s something that we do everyday.

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Miller, whose constitutional challenge of unemployment extension benefits on Topline “went further” than other tea party candidates, also said that “we’ve got to transition out of the Social Security arrangement and go into more of a privatization,” insisting that “it’s not that radical of an idea.”

If Heye’s party is willing to embrace whatever tea party candidates like Miller believe, the Republican platform may also soon reflect Miller’s denial of “man-made global warming,” Sharron Angle’s (R-NV) espousal of the Church of Scientology’s prison rehabilitation program, Ken Buck’s (R-CO) no-exception abortion in cases of rape and incest, and an outright overthrow of the Constitution over birthright citizenship. However, as Ian Millhiser reports, the GOP is well on its way to embracing that mentality.