The ‘de facto Republican’ in the race

August 11, 2006

I hesitate to return to the Senate race in Connecticut — we’ve all had quite a bit of our Lamont/Lieberman fill this week, haven’t we? — but there are a few campaign-related items that still warrant attention.

For example, Joe Lieberman wants voters to know he believes Middle Eastern terrorists are at least as bad as the Nazis.

“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,” Mr. Lieberman said at the Waterbury event. He called that threat “more evil, or as evil, as Nazism and probably more dangerous than the Soviet Communists we fought during the long cold war.”

Um, no. If this is Lieberman’s way of demonstrating that he’s more credible than Dems on the national security, I’m afraid he’s moving in the wrong direction. Again.

Islamic terrorists are a serious international threat, and cross-generational comparisons are inherently tricky, but I don’t think anyone needs any reminders about just how evil the Nazis were. And as for the “evil empire,” if memory serves, the Soviets had nuclear warheads pointed at American soil for nearly a half-century. Al Qaeda deserves our full attention, but in its wildest dreams, it’s not the USSR.

Mark Schmitt seemed amazed at just how low Lieberman has stooped.

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 it’s 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.

And if you don’t find that persuasive, Josh Marshall, who has an admitted “soft spot” for Lieberman, reached his own tipping point when Lieberman argued yesterday that if Connecticut votes for Lamont, the terrorists win.

[N]ow Lieberman is not only running as the de factoRepublican in the race, he’s running as the worst sort of Republican, going on the trail claiming that any serious questioning of our policy in Iraq is a victory for the terrorists, even pulling in yesterday’s terror plot take-down into his angle against Lamont. With Lamont, those guys might have blown up the plane. Leaving Iraq is a win for the terrorists. A Lamont win is a win for the terrorists. That was after Wednesday when Joe pledged to save the Democratic party from the extremists he seems to think make up the entire Democratic party. Except for Joe.

So questioning the president’s policy on Iraq is a win for the terrorists. The Democratic party is outside the mainstream of American politics. I can go to Republicans for that, right?

So it’s not just about the independent candidacy any more. It’s about him. Enough. Just leave.

I reached that same point a while back. It always bothered me when I’d see a few voices compare Lieberman to Zell Miller because I knew that was wildly off-base. Miller ended up as an opponent of labor, abortion rights, gay rights, and the environment. Lieberman, on his worst day, was never this bad.

But given this week, one starts to see the remaining pieces of the progressive mask come off. Lieberman is using far-right rhetoric (“cut and run”), making far-right arguments (“vote for me or the terrorists win”), and garnering support from far-right friends (“Karl Rove is holding for you on line 1….”).

We’re simply not talking about a Democrat here, or even an “independent Democrat.” Lieberman is, as Josh put it, the “de facto Republican in the race.” Connecticut will have to adjust to this dynamic soon — it hasn’t happened yet — and when it does, the race will take on a whole new look.

Growing up as a kid in the 1970’s and 80’s there were many a night when I went to bed worrying a lot about those Soviet Nukes and from talking with relatives who lived during WWII, the Nazi’s were in a league by themselves when it came to terror. Al Qaeda, yeah there some bad guys, but come on, how many of us would even dare compare them to the greatest threats we ever faced? I sure wouldn’t and I’m so sick of people playing the Nazi card. Lieberman needs to hang it up.

  • The Nazis were after domination of Europe. By 1939 they had actually occupied most of the territory they wanted. An analysis of the facts leading up to the invasion of Russia actually show that it was a pre-emptive war (the Soviets were planning on attacking the Nazis in a couple of weeks).

    The Soviets were after world domination, no doubt. That was their proclaimed intent.

    Al Qaeda wants to reestablish the Caliphate. That would mean one government from Spain to the Phillipines. How exactly this is a direct threat to America, I’m not sure, but they are certainly dangerous.

    The big difference between the Nazis, Soviets and Al Qaeda is that the first two started with major powers (Germany and Russia) under their control. Al Qaeda controls nothing now, and once controlled…

    … Afghanistan.

    Very scary, what?

  • Karl Rove advised Lieberman during their phone conversation to make outlandish lies and claims about his opponents because at least 29% of the sheeple will believe anything their beloved Joe feeds them. Karl would know. Just shows that Joe ‘it’s all about me’ Lieberman is not any kind of Dem, regardless of his lies. Lamont will now have to dodge arrows from two directions because of TraitorJoe refusing to accept reality. A fat little piggy that doesn’t want to be pushed away from the corporate teat.

  • Nomojo’s actions, words and Repubs sympathizing with him proving what many of us said or knew. Way to go Nomojo.

    In parlance of BBC’s Coupling, Joe is an unflushable.

  • Lance:

    Since I mostly agree with just about everything you say, and even like the stuff you say I don’t agree with, I’m sad to say that I have come to something you’ve said I completely disagree with, and that is the bit about the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

    It was hardly a “preventive war,” and I don’t know who’s b.s. you’re reading, because no knowledgeable scholar of the subject has ever made that claim. In fact, the Germans were preparing to invade the Soviet Union by early May (which might likely have led to victory since they’d have beaten the Winter of 1941). This was set back due to two things: one was the Italian failure in the invasion of Greece in April, which led the Germans to have to back up Mussolini with troops as they took over Yugoslavia and Greece,which diverted them, and second was the late thaw in the Soviet Union – they needed dry ground for the panzers.

    Right up to the day the Germans invaded, Stalin was ready to shoot anyone claiming they were coming, and the Soviet Union was living right up to the letter of the 1939 Non-Aggression Pact. In point of fact, following the Great Purge, the Red Army couldn’t have invaded anyone, as was pretty clearly shown by their failure to beat the Finns until they used over half their European-front army to do so.

    I know, I know, this is certainly off the point, and pretty much everything else you have said there is accurate, other than that prior to the Second World War the Soviet Union expected a Communist takeover of the world through national revolutions, not through Soviet military prowess – to say otherwise is just to echo an old far right yakking point so ancient you can see the bones through what’s left of the skin.

  • ***With Lamont, those guys might have blown up the plane***
    —Darth Lieberman…Dark Lord of the Reich

    I’d really like to here this neophyte of Herr Bush explain to the entire planet just how Mr. Lamont would somehow have messed up a months-long investigation by the London Police Department and their Pakistani counterparts. Does “Jackalope Joe” actually think that he had anything to do with these guys getting caught?

    What can I say? His journey to the Dark Side is complete—and if he wants to get in bed with the Neo-Fascist regime of Herr Bush—and play their pathetic hate-games—then he’s no longer elegible to hide behind his wife’s historical past, and pulling punches is no longer an option. Belly up to the good-little-bundist bar, Joe. Have another stein of the Kool Aid, and join in the singing of the Hoerst Wessel; the cobblers are just finishing up your new jackboots….

  • I think you are confusing intentions with capability. I have no doubt Islamofascists would wipe Israel, the US and Europe off the map if they could. They’re plenty evil. They just don’t have the means yet.

    The Russians had the means but knew that as a state, if they confronted us, there would be an unwinnable war. The Islamofascists take advantage of their “stateless” status so it’s hard for us to hit back. We’re in a tough position unless we are willing to confront the states that support the terror.

  • David Luban on Bush Administration ‘philosophy’:

    Axiom 1: We are good people.
    Axiom 2: Our enemies are bad people.
    Axiom 3: Anything that helps good people beat bad people is good.
    Corollary 1: Whatever we do to beat our enemies is good.
    Corollary 2: Whatever hinders us from doing what we do to beat our enemies is bad. Theorem 1: Anything that makes us look bad is false. (Proof: If it makes us look bad, it must be false, because, according to Corollary 1, what we do to beat our enemies is good, not bad.)
    Corollary 3: It can’t be true that the Guantanamo prisoners killed themselves because of how we treated them. (Proof: That would make us look bad. Whatever makes us look bad is false.)
    Surprising Corollary 4: Facts that make us look bad are false.
    (Proof: Follows directly from Theorem 1.) (Comment: If you thought that facts can’t be false, you haven’t understood that truth and falsity are moral terms: truth is what good people say, falsity is what bad people say. If bad people state facts, those facts are false.)
    Theorem 2: Laws that constrain us are bad. (Proof: Follows directly from Corollary 2.) But –
    Axiom 4: Good people support the rule of law, and that makes the rule of law good.
    Corollary 4: We support the rule of law. (Proof: By Axiom 1, we’re good people; and by Axiom 4, good people support the rule of law.)
    Surprising Theorem 3: Laws that constrain us don’t exist. (Proof: By Theorem 2, a law that constrains us would be bad. But by Axiom 4, the rule of law is good. Therefore there cannot be such a thing as a law that constrains us.)
    Axiom 5: Anything that anyone uses against us is a weapon of our enemies.
    Decisive Theorem: Any international forum or legal argument that might constrain us, or anything that might make us look bad, is a weapon of our enemies.
    Axiom 6: We’re strong and our enemies are weak.
    Corollary 5: Any international forum or legal argument that might constrain us, or anything that might make us look bad, is a weapon of the weak. To put it in other words, it is an act of asymmetric war against us.

  • “It was hardly a “preventive war,” and I don’t know who’s b.s. you’re reading, because no knowledgeable scholar of the subject has ever made that claim.” – Tom Cleaver

    Just my Russian History professor from GWU.

    She claimed that when Hitler beat Stalin to the punch, Stalin went into his room, locked the door, and sulked for three days while his army was crumbling under the Blitzkrieg.

    I suppose the Russians and Germans, who were technically allies at the time, were sharpening their knives for each other from before they carved up Poland. And Hitler may have meant to defeat the Communists all along. Certainly that was the expectation of the European Conservatives who wouldn’t confront him over other issues (like re-militarizing the Rhineland). All I’m saying is that Hitler gave up the opportunity of claiming the Soviets were the aggressors by letting them invade him, and rather took the opportunity of launching a surprise Blitzkrieg on them instead.

  • The German state, as symbolized by the Nazis, invaded other countries for the purpose of conquering and occupying. The “Islamic terrorists” are not a nation state. They are a small number of difficult to identify loosely connected individuals from a variety of Muslim countries bent upon killing and destroying citizens of nations they view as their enemies. They do not have an army to invade, conquer and occupy.

    What the US faces as a terrorist threat and what Israel faces are two very different things. Israel is threatened by resistance forces to its occupation of land that is not, under international law, part of Israel. It faces another, difficult to quantify, threat to its existence from other Middle Eastern Muslim nations. Lieberman seems to be confusing the type of threats Israel faces with the terrorist threat faced by the US and several European nations.

    As the British and Spanish have demonstrated by example, terrorism Islamic or otherwise is best countered by police. As the US has demonstrated unintentionally in Iraq, warfare doesn’t work against a dispersed, difficult to identify, minute terrorist enemy.

    What does this terrorist threat have to do with a German state attempting world domination through its massive army? The only terrorist-type threat in the Second World War was not by but against German/Nazis by localized resistance to its occupation of other countries.

    Winning the war against terror, as even Tony Blair has recognized, means eliminating the conditions that give rise to terrorism not escalating opposition into warfare that amplifies the very conditions that give rise to terrorism.. See Iraq. The only similarity to Nazism is to those who, like Lieberman and the Rove Republicans, seek to capitalize on people’s fears by singling out scapegoats to fear and destroy.

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