Last summer, Joe Lieberman showed his support for the Democratic party by continuing to run for the Senate after losing the Democratic primary. The Republicans reacted to this by pulling their support from their own candidate, paving the way for a Lieberman victory. (The tepid support for the "official" Democratic candidate, Ned Lamont, didn't hurt Lieberman much, either.) His punishment for kissing off his party, and rejecting the verdict of the voters?
He's now the Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Two weeks ago, Ollie North (of all people) accused Lieberman and John McCain of lying about the level of support that deployed US troops have for the "surge." Last week, Lieberman said that, although he has no "immediate plans" to join the GOP, a Democratic decision to cut war funding could push him that way. A day later, Time reported that he referred to a party switch as "a remote possibility." His reward? He got picked to deliver today's Democratic radio address - talking about the Walter Reed scandal.
The reasons for the Democratic willingness to reward the slimy little worm are, of course, obvious. With the Senate split as closely as it is, a Lieberman defection would throw control to the Republicans, and everyone - particularly Lieberman - knows it. He's been using that knowledge, according to last week's Time report, to pull all sorts of concessions from the leadership - for example, Iraq is no longer discussed at the weekly caucus lunch, because it upsets poor little Joe's delicate sensibilities so much that he was "uncomfortable" attending when it came up.
This situation is partly of the Democrats own making, of course. Their support for Lamont was not as strong as it could have been. Seduced, perhaps, by Lieberman's promise to continue to caucus with them if he retained his seat, they put the bulk of their efforts behind other races. They should have remembered that Lieberman's promise was being made to the voters of Connecticut - the same ones that he had just flipped the bird at when he declined to accept their decision to have him step aside in favor of another Democrat.
He's making them pay the price now, and the price really isn't worth it. Control of the House is secure. The Republicans have already discovered the power of the filibuster, as their successful derailment - aided by Lieberman, by the way - of the non-binding anti-surge resolution demonstrates. Losing control would be bad, but so is being too afraid of losing control to take real action. It's time to call that slimy little refugee from a Tolkien novel's bluff ("gollum, gollum"), and let the chips fall where they may.
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With all due respect, I disagree. Having lived in Connecticut for a good many years, I'll point out that the majority of people in that state are actually republican. His "losing" the primary was mostly due to independent voters that were paid or otherwise influenced by liberal bloggers (there were a couple of incidents of people buying off votes I'll look for the article URL's and post them in a bit). The outcome of the general election, however, was never in doubt.
Believe it or not, Joe's message plays very well to the people that matter most: the CT voters. I have to give the man some degree of credit, he hasn't changed his message from day one. He's been consistent in his opinions, and hasn't followed the "Styles" of the day. Like it or not, the Democrats did NOT win this past November - the Republicans lost. The dems did not have anything close to a coherent platform, the GOP has just done such an ass backwards job of managing everything that they let the election slip through their fingers.
Personally, I think the war in Iraq was a good idea, but I think it was horrendously mismanaged and poorly planned. In this case, as much as I think W is a flaming idiot, I think he just so happens to be right about this surge business (assuming that it's focused, planned well, and managed/executed properly). All these people that are decrying the surge are missing one important point - that the current strategy wasn't working, and they haven't put forward any credible ideas.
Truth be told, I think that while militarily the surge may still prove to be somewhat effective (it's too early to tell now, although from all outward signs it appears to be working), politically it may be too late...
You'd think that a Republican caucus and administration which portrayed flip-flopping as a bad thing would want to stand off from Liebermann rather than rushing to embrace and kiss him and hold him up as an example.
Lieberman's message is: "I miss being in the halls of power so much that I will prostitute any integrity I might have once had, at the expense of my own party and without reservation, to stay there."
If that resonated with Connecticut voters, I cannot imagine the miserable moral depths to which the CT Republicans must have plummeted. And they didn't lose. The voters, who seem to have voted for a democrat who turned out to be a republican, are the ones who lost.
Of course his snivelling, two-faced, Quisling behaviour is entirely appropropriate to the Republican party at the federal level.