No Time For Joe

Joe Lieberman used the rise of the neo conservative movement to raise his own political profile. He assumed that Democrats would continue to support him based on party loyalty. He also bargained that Republican voters would be impressed by his new conservative style. This was Lieberman’s strategy for winning the national office of the Presidency. He obviously wasn’t sure of his plan. In 2000 he continued to run for his Senate seat while seeking to enter the White House with Al Gore. In 2004 he ran for President. Joe was seen even then as a pale reflection of the current administration and was quickly removed from the running. Good thing for him his Senate seat was safe, until now.

Ned Lamont won the Democratic primary last week in Connecticut. He gained a great deal of support from the left against a senior Senator that they perceived as turning too much toward the conservative camp of the opposition party. Senator Lieberman has been a steady supporter of the war in Iraq. He’s a supporter of keeping stock options off corporate earnings sheets. He created the American Council of Trustees and Alumni with the help of Lynn Cheney to attack college professors that challenged public policy after 9/11. He is a member of the Empower America foundation along with Jack Kemp and Bill Bennett. Together with these conservative thinkers he created a political agenda. These political friends have long colored Lieberman’s political views.
Lieberman has made many “compromises” and deals with the republican leadership that has almost always favored the conservative position while giving very little to Democrats in return.

The best example may be the failure of Democrats to use the Senate procedure of the filibuster to block conservative nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court. This was, in no small part, thanks to Joe Lieberman and the “Gang of 14” that reached a deal letting the vote for Bush appointments to occur. This was great for Republicans but Democrats gained nothing except retaining the right to filibuster some other time, but only under “extreme circumstances”. This was not so much a compromise as it was surrender. Liberal frustration with Lieberman came to graphic illustration when President Bush kissed him on the cheek moments before his 2005 State of the Union address.
Republican voters don’t need a conservative Democrat to vote for. There are plenty of conservative republicans to choose from. Why should party Democrats continue to support Lieberman when he continues to undercut the party’s political position, seemingly at every turn? He voted with Democrats 90 percent of the time during his time in the Senate. Did he think no one would notice how much work he was doing to kill initiatives before the vote? Lieberman has now alienated almost everyone. He has called himself a Democrat for many years, but his agenda has been first and foremost a personal one.

Joe Lieberman is a good man, but his greed for personal advancement has blinded him. The voters of Connecticut should be proud of themselves, seeing past Lieberman’s personal agenda. Standing up for an ideal means more than simply trying to align yourself with a majority. The primary results in Connecticut last week weren’t because of a liberal bloggers “witch-hunt” or simply the issue of Iraq. It was a clarification of party ideals. The President may support policies I disagree with but at least he can be trusted to believe in his own agenda. What Joe Lieberman believes in can no longer be certain. In these difficult times political power players are just a distraction and an impediment to solving the problems we face. It is only right that candidates like Lieberman be asked to step aside. The rest of us have work to do.