I maintain that a 52-48 GOP controlled Senate with Lamont as the new junior Senator from CT (and Talent, Allen, and Burns winning re-election) would have been a much better scenario than a 49-49 RAT controlled Senate, with "Independent" LIEberman putting the RATs in charge (which is what we got when the NRSC and national GOP focusing all their efforts on "stopping Lamont" and figured guys like George Allen were "safe" anyway)
Even a 50-50 GOP controlled Senate (with Lamont as the junior Senator from CT, Cheney casting the tie-breaking vote, and the GOP winning only ONE of the three "down to the wire" Senate races with Republican incumbents) would have been better than what we got. The RATs have managed to do an enormous amount of damage by controlling the Senate since 2006.
As an isolated Senate race, sure, having a younger, more liberal Lamont would be "worse" than LIEberman (though not nearly as "worse" as Lieberman's fan club made it out to be.... it was a choice between 100% socialist Lamont vs. 95% socialist LIEberman, and Lieberman voted reliably with the RATs on every issue besides the war on terror, no matter how much he feigned being "independent" and an "undecided" swing vote) But in the long run, I can only think of maybe 2 or 3 times where Lamont would have voted differently.
If you think about it, what you’re saying is that we *shouldn’t* have supported the card-counting Republican nominee (at least not monetarily) so as to send the money to Allen, Burns and Talent (and Santorum, DeWine, etc.—we didn’t have a crystal ball). I agree with that. But Republicans in the state wouldn’t want Lamont, so given that the GOP nominee couldn’t win, they’d naturally support the less repulsive Democrat in Lieberman. But I agree with you that no Republican (at least no Republican outside CR) should have dinated to Lieberman’s campaign, since it’s money that could have beenused to save our Senate majority.