Saturday, August 12, 2006

A Few Things on Lieberman

I don't know how closely you've been following l'affaire Lieberman, but the man has gone from center-right GOP enabler to raving hack in the time it takes a Maserati to go from zero to sixty. I had a "debate" of sorts about why he lost with a colleague the other day, and this guy -- who is smart, and has a law degree -- seemed to think it was pretty much the war thing and nothing else. I tried to disabuse him of that notion, but he wouldn't budge. I did some research and it didn't seem to matter. Well, let's go to the public record:
The thinking part of the country recognizes that the war was just a part of Tuesday's vote. It was also about Lieberman's general desire to do Bush's bidding and to attack fellow Democrats. Which he did full throttle, attacking [primary opponent Ned] Lamont for being about just one issue--Iraq, sounding suspiciously like a lot of Republicans in making that charge.

But say it is just about Iraq. Well, then let's talk about Iraq. The Republican Party and its newest best friend are with Bush 100% and want to stay the course in Iraq.
And Darth Cheney still thinks supporting the Iraq Debacle is part of being aggressively in favor of national security, when it's clear to anyone with half a brain that it was based on lies from the start:
"It's an unfortunate development, I think, from the standpoint of the Democratic Party, to see a man like Lieberman pushed aside because of his willingness to support an aggressive posture in terms of our national security strategy," Mr. Cheney said in a telephone interview with news service reporters. . . . He cast Mr. Lieberman's loss in ominous terms, suggesting that it would hearten American terrorist enemies. Terrorists, he said, are "betting on the proposition that ultimately they can break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task."
And Lieberman says a vote for Lamont is a vote for terrorism:
If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out [of Iraq] by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England. It will strengthen them and they will strike again.
And elsewhere Lieberman comes further off the rails:
"I'm worried that too many people, both in politics and out, don't appreciate the seriousness of the threat to American security and the evil of the enemy that faces us -- more evil, or as evil, as Nazism and probably more dangerous than the Soviet Communists we fought during the long Cold War," Mr. Lieberman said.
At the same link Mark Schmitt, a good commentator, echoes my thoughts on this point:
I'm sorry, but this is just a deranged, or at best deeply confused and manic, thing to say. It shows a lack of perspective and reality and responsibility, even in its lack of clarity about what exactly the threat is and how to defeat it. Why does anyone accept that this kind of blather can be considered taking the threat more "seriously"? It's not. It's hugely unserious in its trivialization of the great moral challenges of the Twentieth Century and its bald politicization of the current challenge [...] This is a man who has become so deeply unserious that I don't think he should be a U.S. Senator, from either party.
Write it down because you heard it here first. Lieberman is going to lose this election.

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