Posted on 12/02/2005 10:28:58 AM PST by wagglebee
Sen. Joe Lieberman stands virtually alone among Democrats after expressing his staunch support for the Bush administration’s handling of the war in Iraq.
An official with the liberal activist group MoveOn.org said the group might go so far as to back a Democratic challenger to Lieberman in next year’s Senate race, according to the Hartford Courant.
On Tuesday Lieberman published an editorial in the Wall Street Journal – reported by NewsMax – saying that his recent trip to Iraq convinced him further that the U.S. should not abandon "27 million Iraqis to 10,000 terrorists.”
The next day in an address on the progress of the war, President Bush said those who have called for withdrawal timetables, including 38 of the Senate’s Democrats, are "sincerely wrong.”
He went on: "As Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman said recently, setting an artificial timetable would ‘discourage our troops because it seems to be heading for the door. It will encourage the terrorists. It will confuse the Iraqi people.’
"Senator Lieberman is right.”
Lieberman was one of five Senate Democrats to oppose a Democratic-backed plan to require the president to set timetables for American troop withdrawals.
That has drawn some sharp criticism from the left. Tom Matzzie, Washington director of MoveOn.org, said: "The war on Iraq has all the characteristics of Joe-momentum,” recalling a slogan Lieberman used during the 2004 presidential campaign.
"Just like he didn’t realize his presidential ambitions were in trouble, he doesn’t understand the war in Iraq isn’t going anywhere.”
Matzzie – whose organization claims more than 50,000 Connecticut members, according to the Courant – said that if his members ask, his group would back a Democratic challenger to Lieberman.
He added that when he was in New Haven last month, he found "the No. 1 question people asked me was, ‘What are we going to do about Joe Lieberman?’”
Norman Orstein, political analyst at Washington’s American Enterprise Institute, highlighted Lieberman’s isolation among Democrats.
He told the Courant: "A consensus on the war is forming in the Democratic center, that it’s virtually impossible to set a withdrawal date, but there should be a change in our approach to the war.
"Joe is not in that center, and I don’t see anyone else in the party where he is.”
Scary!!!! and thanks for ping.
'MyThoughts' are scary too.
Sure says a lot about Billy's (gag) "conservatism."
It did not escape conservatives' notice that Kristol's gleeful public attack on Sec Rumsfield was a carefully constructed attack on Mr Bush, and on conservative thought.
Little Billy's backstabbing Mr Bush and his administration was unconscionable.
Such undermining of a sitting president did not exist even in the flawed Clinton administration and certainly not to the degree approaching that visited on the current administration by Kristol, and the group that purports to be in its corner.
It's always difficult to determine what motivation drives that type of elliptical, convoluted thinking.
Although Mummy and Daddy might have threatened to take away the magazine if Billy didn't Hurry Up and Do Something.
My thoughts exactly. Yours was the first thread I came to expressing this. As if Lieberman is crushed to not have ShoveOff.coms support.
I'm with you.
Joe Lieberman has his moments - as happened this week with his commendable public support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, but he proved in 2000 that he is really just another a liberal Democrat, ready and willing to heartily endorse the party line when it serves his purposes, as it did for him in the 2000 vice-presidential campaign.
The best thing the Republicans can do is to accept Joe Lieberman's support of OIF and capitalize on it, as President Bush did the other day in his excellent speech, and then let it go at that. Joe Lieberman is a liberal Democrat politician and one good deed that helps the Republicans and the president does not make Joe a conservative - or even an ally.
As a Connecticut resident, my personal prediction is that if Joe Lieberman runs again in '06 (not a guarantee, yet) he will win reelection easily. The Connecticut majority party (Democrats) will not vote for any Republican candidate and Lieberman's pro-war stance can help him with the minority party Republicans who know their party's candidate (almost always weak and a sacrificial lamb) will inevitably lose - so why not vote for the pro-war Democrat? That would offset the looney left's attempts to derail Lieberman, who is generally popular in CT...the same state that routinely reelects South American dictator-lover and all-around useless politician Chris Dodd every six years, without fail.
Joe Lieberman's senate seat is in no real jeopardy and his national stature has been enhanced by his pro-war position, despite the ravings of the far-left that now control the Democrat party.
Please Freepmail me if you want on or off my infrequent Connecticut ping list.
bttt
bttt
Moveon.org won't support or back Lieberman?
Dang, but old Joe gets luckier all the time.
Of course, if more like Joe and Zell Miller stood up, maybe they could drag the party back from Liberals and and the nation could actually function again.
bump
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