Why Joe Lieberman Will Never Be President (list is long)

HARTFORD COURANT ^ | August 24, 2003 | JACK W. GERMOND

[Liz]

The junior senator is known around Washington as an especially nice man. But is he looking in the right direction?

The question for all the Democratic presidential candidates these days is how can you get there from here. The answer for Joe Lieberman is that he probably can't.

There are, of course, caveats. The senator from Connecticut may strike an undiscovered nerve in the electorate in the series of debates this fall and winter and expose hidden strength in the Iowa precinct caucuses and New Hampshire primary. At 61, Joe Lieberman has some history of defying the conventional wisdom in 30 years as a politician.

[Liz]

What is also becoming increasingly apparent is that he has a special ability - because of both his religion and his politics - to open fissures in the Democratic Party that could undermine the already imposing task of unseating a Republican incumbent in the White House.

Germond nailed that down.

[B.Bumbleberry]

Well, I think he's trying to be VP, not president. I suspect he doesn't even want to be president.

[ex-snook]

The Democrat-Democrats think Lierberman has done everything but wear a thong and deliver pizzas to President Bush.

[Liz]

I hope when LIEberman does his lewinsky interpretation, the Dims get him on video. LOL.

[Liz]

Interesting take........

[J. L. Chamberlain]

Germond's article is pure common sense. The Bubba Democrats will never, ever vote for Holy Joe. It just amazes me that someone hasn't had the guts to tell poor old Joe.

J

[Liz]

I would surmise there have been attempts to tell LIEberman he's a no-go candidate. However, algore created a monster picking LIEb to run as VP, and one senses LIEb now feels he's the fair-haired boy, and is "entitled" to the Dim prez nod.

[ThinkFreedom]

BUMP for later comment

[Northern Yankee]

Joe Lieberman continues to remind his audiences that he and Algore won the popular vote, and therefore really beat Goerge W. Bush in the 2000 election.

Uhhhh... Joe... there is that silly little thing called the ELECTORAL COLLEGE!!!!!

[Ukiapah Heep]

So, Joe Lieberman is to the 2004 Democrat Party as Al Smith was to the 1924 Democrat Party.

[beckett]

How can Germond pretend to write about the problems facing Lieberman's campaign and not mention Israel?

Silly piece, the kind of safe piece an oldtime political hack like Germond should know better than to write.

[VOR78]

Which is why he should be every conservative's new Democratic party best friend. He's one of those guys who will help polarize opinion inside the Democratic party itself, with the moderates likely backing him and the left and far left backing Dean/Kerry. Any fighting within the Dems own party is nothing but a good thing for us. The weaker their candidate comes out of the primaries, the better.

[Liz]

.....algore won the popular vote......

......yeah, sure, if you factor in the Chicago Vote Mfg Co, the family business run by the Daley's....who count and recount til they get it right......and at the last minute bring in the winning vote margin in used pizza boxes....

[Liz]

Even his campaign theme song is "Happy Days Are here Again".

[Liz]

Why LIEberman should never be president.


A DIFFERENT LIEBERMAN REMEMBERED
(a staunch pro-abortion candidate makes a pro-life pledge)
Washington Times | 9/11/00 | George Archibald


September 11, 2000

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman is a staunch supporter of abortion rights now, and even voted (six separate times) against a ban on partial-birth abortion, but Catholic leaders in Connecticut remember another Joe Lieberman.

He called on the state's archbishop with a pro-life pledge 12 years ago, when he was first a candidate for the U.S. Senate, and even told pro-life leaders he would have voted to confirm Judge Robert Bork for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Mr. Lieberman met with Archbishop John F. Whealon of Hartford to seek Catholic votes in the final stretch of his 1988 Democratic bid to oust 18-year Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr., a Republican who supported abortion rights, from the U.S. Senate.

"Joe was very liberal, like Weicker, but we had a poll on abortion that showed which way the wind was blowing," says Daniel Cosgrove, then the Democratic town chairman in Branford, Mr. Lieberman's hometown. The poll showed anti-abortion sentiment outweighed pro-choice views in urban areas throughout Connecticut. "In the Waterbury area, it was more than any, 12,000 [more] against," Mr. Cosgrove says.

Records of a meeting between Mr. Lieberman and top officials of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) two months after the 1988 election quote Mr. Lieberman as saying he "thinks there are too many abortions," and promisinghe would not "apply a litmus test" against pro-life judicial nominees.

Archbishop Whealon has since died, but his former secretary, Father Thomas Berry, says he remembers the 1988 meeting where Mr. Lieberman "expressed himself as coming from a tradition in support of life, not in favor of abortion on demand."

"He expressed himself against abortion, all suicide, and euthanasia. His position on that definitely was well received by the archbishop and priests," Father Berry says.

A spokesman for Mr. Lieberman says Mr. Cosgrove's memory of the meeting with the archbishop "is not accurate," and says Mr. Lieberman has been consistently pro-choice. Mr. Cosgrove says he and state Sen. Regina Smith, who conducted the pro-life poll for the archdiocese, arranged for

Mr. Lieberman, then the state attorney general, to meet with the Catholic prelate before the election to lay out his support for Catholic pro-life positions, which Mr. Weicker had actively opposed.

The strategy worked, Mr. Cosgrove says. Mr. Lieberman convinced the archbishop he favored pro-life positions and would vote differently than Mr. Weicker, thus winning Catholic support that pushed him to a narrow 10,000-vote victory — the only Democratic Senate upset of that year.

With Republican Vice President George Bush outpolling Democrat Michael S. Dukakis by almost 100,000 votes in Connecticut's presidential balloting that year, Mr. Lieberman's strategic appeal for pro-life votes countered the

Republican tide that otherwise might have benefited Mr. Weicker, Mr. Cosgrove says. Mr. Lieberman's winning margin was less than 1 percent of 1.4 million votes. Mr. Lieberman, an orthodox Jew, has defended his record, saying Jewish law is so deeply divided on the issue of abortion that even among orthodox Jews it may be construed as "a personal matter." The senator's spokesman, Dan Gerstein, insists there was no meeting between Mr. Lieberman and the archbishop before the 1988 election. "No one on staff at the time can remember a meeting with Archbishop Whealon during the campaign.

He had a private meeting with the archbishop after the election," the spokesman said. "Mr. Cosgrove's recollection of what was said at the meeting also is not accurate," Mr. Gerstein said. Mr. Lieberman "never said he would limit a woman's right to choose, that he would vote to ban abortion or to overturn Roe v. Wade."

The Supreme Court, in that 1973 case, held that a woman had a constitutional right to an abortion in certain circumstances. Mr. Lieberman has voted consistently pro-choice, both as a Connecticut state senator and U.S. senator, since his first elective office in 1970, Mr. Gerstein said.

Father Berry, now assigned to St. Mary's Parish in Newington, Conn., says Mr. Lieberman presented himself as a clear pro-life alternative, saying, "He was not an abortion activist as Senator Weicker was . . . and said his approach would be different."

In fact, Mr. Lieberman's pro-life assurances were so convincing that Archbishop Whealon arranged for the Democratic candidate to meet with Catholic priests throughout the state shortly before the November 1988 balloting. Mr. Lieberman's expressed pro-life views in those meetings, Father Berry said. "That probably was not insignificant" in the November 1988 election outcome, he said.

Two months after the election, Mr. Lieberman and key staff aides again met with pro-life leaders in Washington and assured them he was an ally, says Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC).

Mr. Lieberman said he would have voted to confirm Judge Bork to the Supreme Court had he been a member of the Senate during the confirmation hearings, according to written minutes of the meeting with Dr. Jack C. Willke, then the NRLC head, and Regina Smith, Connecticut's representative to the group.

Judge Bork, who was eventually denied confirmation, testified in Senate hearings that he would have voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. Mr. Lieberman "would have voted for Bork, under whom he studied" at Yale University law school, according to the meeting notes taken by Mr. Johnson.

The notes quoted Mr. Lieberman as saying: "I'm not going to vote against a judicial nominee just because he's pro-life. I'm not going to apply a litmus test."

Mr. Lieberman acknowledged there was disagreement among his own new Senate staff on the abortion issue, the notes show: "He thinks there are too many abortions, but many disagree, women will have them anyway. He is unsettled, ambivilent [sic]. Some staff on both sides. Always access to him or top staff, will be heard respectfully. Regina is great. Continue dialog." ####

[Northern Yankee]

I absolutely agree with you Liz!

WE here in Wisconsin have been trying for the past year to have voter ID for those who wish to vote, but the Dems keep opposing it, and our Dem. Governor Doyle just vetoed it in the last budget.

In Milwaukee during the 2000 election, we had over 9000 voters unaccounted for in Milw. County, (No forwarding address)and our Dist. Attorney won't do a thing about it.

So if I ever hear another dem tell me how Bush "stole the election", I swear I will slap him silly!

[Liz]

....if I ever hear another dem tell me how Bush "stole the election," I swear I will slap him silly!....

Have at it, my friend.

There are zillion of ways the dirty Dims steal elections. Strange how those last-minute votes in used Chicago pizza parlor boxes actually add up to more than the number of registered voters in those precincts, isn't it?

The crooked Fla count -- in front of the TV cameras, no less -- was the worst. Thank God the USSC saw what they were up to and stopped the count.

[Liz]

If Holy Joe got the nod, he'd be a living nightmare. LIEberman's inherent "sense of entitlement" would grow to monstrous proportions. We'd never be rid of him.

A failed Dean would take no for an answer and not try to live off his failed ambitions as LIEb would.

As an abortionist, Dr Dean is a good target. He would be putty in the hands of a fired-up Bush.