Lieberman’s capacity to be a Republican hack knows no bounds

May 21, 2008

It’s funny, in a way. Every time Joe Lieberman gets more comfortable in the role of Republican attack dog, I think, “Well, now he’s done it. Lieberman couldn’t possibly get any worse.” And yet, the guy keeps finding new sharks to jump over.

It’s not that Lieberman has changed, necessarily, but rather it’s that his hackery has become more intense and bellicose. He’s gone from being a largely incoherent neocon to being a largely incoherent belligerent neocon.

Lieberman touches all the far-right bases in a spectacularly inane op-ed for the Wall Street Journal.

How did the Democratic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose? […]

The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.

Instead a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our own. But that was not the choice most Democratic leaders made. When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy – not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush – activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.

It’s as if Lieberman is living in some kind of Twilight Zone. After the attacks of 9/11, Democrats were on board with a unified, global counter-terrorism strategy. The problem came when the Bush gang — cheered on by McCain, Lieberman, and Bill Kristol — decided that the strategy needed to change, and it was time to go after Iraq.

The result is the Democratic Party further to the American mainstream on foreign policy and national security than at any point since the end of the Cold War.

Jonathan Chait makes the argument about the “Zell-ification” of Lieberman, noting that Lieberman is not yet “a raving lunatic like Miller,” but rather that Lieberman’s “transformation from a Democrat with weak partisan attachments to essentially a partisan Republican” is complete.

I think that’s right, but I’m not sure if it goes far enough. In some ways, Lieberman is actually worse than Miller. The latter’s tragic deterioration led him to simply be exploited. When Miller fell apart, it was sad and painful to watch. The proper response wasn’t anger, but pity over what had become of a once-great Democratic voice.

Lieberman, however, has no excuse. He was the Democratic VP candidate eight years ago, sought the party’s presidential nomination four years ago, and vowed to his own constituents as recently as two years ago that he was almost desperate to help elect a Democratic president in 2008. Indeed, he’s repulsed by the foreign policy worldviews of Obama and the Clintons now, but it was Lieberman who begged them to campaign for him two years ago — when their worldviews were identical to what they are now.

If it was unclear before, the necessity of the Democratic Party distancing itself from Lieberman’s bizarre and extreme worldview seems to be more obvious with each passing day.

I was hoping we’d move to kick him out of the party after the election, but fuck it — throw his ass out now.

  • ” [T]he Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.”

    You mean back when the Democrats were center-left?

  • Sounds like Joe Menteum is bitter. But you know if you say that folks who think Bush is screwing things up really are with the terrorists, it pisses people off.

  • That’s more the desperation talking. He knows that when the Dems pick up more Senators, he’s finished as a political “force” (force of what I don’t know.) There is no way that anyone in the Democratic Party is going to tolerate him.

    This is just like his 2006 “independent” bid which was to save his precious (ego and power) and now he’s watching it ebb away.

    My 50 cent take is I think that what scares him more than anything else is irrelevance. What good is a tax free salary and some perks if you can’t wave a magic wand to get people to do what you want to do? Control freaks like Joe hate that and it is even worse torture than throwing him out of office (so close yet so far.)

  • I couldn’t understand how the Democrats could nominate this tenth-wit back in 2000 on anything past pandering affirmative action. I never could understand the elevation of Geraldine Ferraro for anything but the same reason 16 years earlier.

    They’ve both demonstrated what happens when a neverwas/neverwillbe gets elevated to couldabeenacontendah, and then loses. Geraline’s merely pathetic, while Joe has crossed the line to Traitor. Gonna be interesting to see which window the Democrats push him out of once they win the seven Senate seats they’re going to win in November.

  • Despite the denials, I still believe that Lieberman will be McCain’s running mate.

  • When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves.

    The conclusion is absurd, but the cause of a change in attitude just might have had something to do with lying about the reasons for the Iraq invasion, the way private contracters were used, the excessive use of politics of fear, recruiting problems, deficit problems, weakened dollar, cost of oil, respect around the world, Abu Ghraib, civil war, and the continued survival of Bin Laden, not to mention chaos in Pakistan, Iran and North Korea,

  • Lieberman is a neocon, first and foremost and a democrat-independent-republican as the opportunity presents itself.

    The democrats are better off without him. Most Republicans wish they could dump the neocons and get back to their true conservative agenda with an added onus on energy independence.

  • How did my Party, the party of FDR, put itself in this position, poised for huge gains, with a veto-proof majority in reach? With a highly charismatic nominee, poised to be the first black President? With Party identification going in the Democrat’s direction, and the opposition having been proven wrong about absolutely everything, even as they abandon their appeal to Conservative values?

    It all began when they refused to give Bush a blank slate on the war, and deteriorated the more they refused to reach across the aisle and cave to the opposition. It was exacerbated when they began to criticize the President when the war went badly, threatening the authority of the DLC, of which I have been a member for many years. And finally, but perhaps most importantly, the Party has jolted further left than at any time in 20 years, abandoning the core Conservative Christian values I have exploited every campaign.

    And so here we are, with majorities greater than the Republicans had at the height of the Republican Revolution, a rash of open-seats from GOP retirements and prosecutions that can only further jeopardize my committee chairs.

    With the Party growing ever less appeasing to the Republican Party and increasingly demanding accountability, and by abandoning conservatism, all these trends can only accelerate, and I can see no end to the Democratic resurgence I banked my reputation on never happening.

  • The Mugwump spouts again. (Does anybody better fit the definition of someone with his “mug on one side of the aisle and his wump on the other”?)

    What gets me is how he was chosen in 2000 — gee, if Kerry had his way, and some supporters of the losing candidate have theirs now, we would have had successive VP Candidates Lieberman, McCain, and Clinton.

    I at least can claim to have been against him in 2000 — when I challenged PFAW to hold this pro-censorship, ‘religiously pro-Family Values’ character to the same standards they held other candidates to. (I knew I’ve vote for Gore even with him on the ticket — but I hated the idea.)

  • I don’t read the Hartford Courant or the New Haven Register so I don’t know how Leiberman is going over with the folks in the Nutmeg state. But I would have to guess there is outrage – especially among the Democrats who voted for him in the general election out of sense of loyalty to an old Dem. Does anybody know if he’s popular there or despised?

  • Joe’s post in this thread makes the important point: he’s jumping aboard a sinking ship.

    I had the same reaction when Andrew Sullivan posted something delusional and false from the Corner this morning. Five years ago, it would have cast fear into the hearts of the Democratic Party. But Republican jingoism has played itself out, in the world, and, at long last, in the electorate. This crap doesn’t work anymore. He isn’t fooling anyone but the WSJ op-ed page.

    It makes him more pathetic than Zell, in a way. At least Zell had the conventional spinelessness to join a winning team. Lieberman is driven by pique and irrationality to abandon the party to which he belonged for decades just as it reaches its greatest popularity and power in at least a decade and a half, probably more.

  • “The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.” — Joe Lieberman (R-CT)

    What Sept. 11 demonstrated is how wrong the Republican party that Lieberman is embracing has been on so many issues.

    — We learned that the FBI and the CIA each had information that combined could have alerted a competent government to what was imminent, but they were more concerned about defending their “turf’ than they were about protecting American citizens.

    — We learned that a small group of criminals can cause a huge tragedy, and that since the disaster at the World Trade Center could have been exponentially worse if the criminals had uses some of the weapons the United States gives away so casually, that maybe we should be more careful about where those weapons go.

    — We learned that Saudi Arabia, which funded 9-11, isn’t really our friend. They are our pusher — contemptuous of us for our addiction to oil and willing to give us just enough concessions that we don’t need to break our addiction.

    — We learned that counting on corporations place our security above their profits is stupid. The private airport security was a joke and everyone knew it, and cockpit doors weren’t strengthened because the airline-controlled FAA didn’t think it was worth the expense.

    — And we learned the folly of electing an administration that was proud of their disdain for “academics” and deluded in the correctness of their false world view.

    But we haven’t really taken any of these lessons to heart — except that the CIA and FBI are now happily cooperating in the torture of brown-skinned people.

  • The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. I live for the day this day will not be the day certain types cite as changing everything. If there is one thing that has not changed, that must be the willingness of all too certain types to demonize anyone who offers a competing solution. We will remain broken to the extent so called leaders insist on an us vs them view of the world.

  • Heretick,

    9/11 did change everything. That was the day the GOP got license to take everything good and decent about this country, and crap on it.

  • The Senator from Jerusalem is toast in the Democratic Party, and he obviously has bigger fish to fry since he’s not even pretending to be a Democrat any longer. I’ve been saying for a while that if the Dems pick up a solid majority, as they very likely will, he will be a man-without-a-party. He’ll be poison on both sides of the aisle, and he’ll probably resign in favor of a well-paid Israeli-based sinecure, assuming he’s not in a McSame administration.

    The thought of McSame and Lieberman on the same ticket makes some sense if you’re courting the Likudnik (neocon) Jewish vote, and want some of their considerable money. Many of the born-agains and evangelicals are also big boosters of Israel – bring on the rapture – and how Lieberman would play with them isn’t all that obvious, but what you would have is a ticket of two old farts spouting nonsense. Joe won’t be able to deliver his home state. Forget that. But then Gore couldn’t deliver his either in 2000.

    Whatever gets him out of the Senate and into well-earned oblivion is OK.

  • Kristol predicts McCain may pick Lieberman for VP slot

    (1). billy has proven himself WRONG on virtually everything he proclaims to the world – perhaps this is good news.

    (2). If true – this telegraphs their intent to steal the election. There is no way lieberman brings any legitimate support to the mcsame ticket – joe is widely out of step with America – more than 80% of population wants change & LIE-berman is just more of the same, a political hack.

    This would be one of the memes that the mainstream media would “catapult” to create distractions and talking points to justify a stolen election.

    I can here it now, “Soccer moms and hard-working Americans (read: uneducated whites men) decided to vote for concilliation and an end to divisive politics.

    What a bunch of crock – but this is how they steal elections, framing the vote fraud behind inane talking points that they amplify through the media echo-chamber

  • SteveT: I’d add one more item to your list: “We learned that at a moment of national tragedy and national unity, the Bush White House would start planning how to use the situation for partisan advantage before the rubble was cold.”

  • Obviously, there’s more to it than LIEbermann tells- I would suppose that GWB has promised him a nice fat position at Rand or Carlyle or KBR after his sycophantic Zel Miller-like defection.
    He will be the token Benedict Arnold at the RNC so Young Republicants can point and say “Eve the Dems like McCain” Dean needs to excommunicate Joe, or Joe needs to drop the “Democrat” from his title.

  • SteveT (#16) — excellent! I think Lieberman’s fury at Lamont’s ’06 primary win led to a permanent, blinding rage from which two things followed: he decided to punish Democrats, and he felt free (at last!) to be the Republican he’d become. It’s not an honest position, but perhaps his anger is so consuming that he himself did (and does) not see what he’s doing. As an English major, I’ve never made much money but literature helps me think. Lieberman’s story is not tragedy: he’s not important enough to carry that kind of action. But the flaws are classic — self delusion, pride, political blindness. And consider the Dante-like dilemma he has fashioned for himself: he loves power and loves therefore the perks and positions that come with being part of the majority, but must remain a Democrat — how he must hate that! — to get them and, because the margin is so slim, by doing so enables all those other Democrats to have power! At any rate, this too shall pass, probably in January. Meanwhile he gives us a window on the heart of darkness. Which is useful.

  • i wanna spotlight this quote from joltin’ joe. “The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on.”

    really??? does anyone remember bush even having a public “foreign policy course”
    of ANY kind before 9/11? the most notable element of his presidency was the amount of vacation time he was taking. except for pushing tax cuts he was pretty much adrift.

    now, on the other hand, his PRIVATE “foreign policy course” consisted of asking various administration officals to find a way to justify invading iraq. that certainly didn;t change after 9/11.

  • The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on.

    That’s true. At the time, he was saber-rattling against China.

  • Memekiller @ #18: “9/11 did change everything. That was the day the GOP got license to take everything good and decent about this country, and crap on it.”

    No, they’ve been doing that for decades. Reagan started the modern incarnation of it, really, with his determination to utterly destroy the social safety net and civil rights (among other things).

  • This country, especially the Religious Right, has always had a symbiotic relationship with Israel. 9/11 just enabled us to feel what it is to bleed like they do and worry about every possible IED and suicide bombers out there. The Repugs especially took the lesson to heart. We became one.

    Joe is just dumbfounded that we don’t understand that Iran has to go because of the terrible threat it poses to Israel/us. 9/11 should have completed the melding of the U.S. and Israel forever and now we are finding our own identity after all. What a disappointment it must be for him.

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