Joe Lieberman: Worse than Ever
Throughout his independent campaign for Senate, Joe Lieberman promised that, if elected, he would caucus with Democrats and would not switch to the GOP.
He
promised.
Well, of course, now that he's won and the Democrats have a two-seat margin in the Senate, he's threatening to switch parties. It's a way of blackmailing the Democrats. It's also a betrayal to the voters who took him at his word.
Silly voters!
Yesterday in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Lieberman continued his usual grandstanding and self-promoting.
But no sooner had Mr. Levin outlined his case for a phased pullout of troops beginning in four to six months than the new Independent Democratic hero of the hawkish wing, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, began acting the role of cross-examiner, leading Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American military commander in the Middle East, to say that such a withdrawal would increase violence and instability.
“I take it by your answer that you profoundly disagree?” Mr. Lieberman asked. With the Democrats, he meant. “We have a window of opportunity and, really, responsibility now, after the election,” he said, “to find a bipartisan consensus for being supportive of the efforts of our troops and our diplomats there to achieve success.”
To this, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, the leading Democratic contender for the 2008 race, knocked back the remains in her coffee cup.....
I'm surprised she didn't throw them at him.
As Mr. Nelson [of Florida] questioned General Abizaid, [John McCain] stood up to confer with Senator Susan M. Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine. At this, Mr. Lieberman got up and walked to the Republican side to join them in a brief, chuckling huddle, then ambled back to his party’s side with a glance at his colleagues as if to say, “You watching?”
What a dreadful man. Perhaps he's enjoying sticking it to Dems who didn't support his independent bid; perhaps he's trying to leverage his position to maximize his own power within the Democratic caucus. But Connecticut voters don't want Lieberman to play this game. He's pretending to be bipartisan, when in fact he's just power-hungry.
I argued during Lieberman's campaign that, though he'd probably win—he'd get so much support from Republican voters, it would be hard not to—Lieberman would sell out whatever remaining principles he had. He might win another six years in the Senate, but he'd stand for nothing other than his own uncontrollable, self-consuming ambition.
So far, seems about right.
