CT-Sen: Lieberman's TWO big lies
by kos
Thu Jul 06, 2006 at 06:59:46 PM PDT
Today, faced off against a Democrat, Lieberman bared his fangs.
Why the difference?
Because against Cheney, Lieberman didn't risk losing power. He was still running for his Senate seat. He had his insurance policy for power. Today, he risks losing power. That speaks volumes to Lieberman's priorities.
As I cleared brush (really!) and pondered the debate, watching my kid play, two things stood out -- 1) Joe Lieberman proved that yes, he is a politician, in both the good and bad meanings of the word. The good -- he was a polished debator and looked like he had done this a million times before. The bad -- he lied, obfuscated, used cute rhetorical twists that did nothing but debase the level of discourse on the debate. Lieberman didn't even bother thanking Lamont for showing up, a courtesy that just about every political debator extends to their opponent. Rude.
And 2) Ned Lamont proved that no, he is not a politician. He was clearly nervous. I mean, imagine your first debate being against an 18-year Senator and former VP candidate, with not just a statewide audience, but a national one tracked closely by half the blogosphere and just about the entire national political press corps. And given he's now the leader of a new people-powered army, imagine his desire to good for them, to justify their passions and energy they are spending on his behalf. Gah. I'd choke under that kind of pressure.
But Ned didn't. He held his own, even against a boorish, rude, and lying opponent. And as a result, the post-debate spin seemed tilted decidedly in his direction. Lieberman may have technically won the debate, but he did so using tactics so ugly that Lamont was the sentimental favorite.
Lieberman may not have had another choice. He needed a clear knockout to dent Lamont's huge momentum, and perhaps he hoped that his constant badgering would force Lamont to lose his composure. And at times, it looked like Lieberman might actually succeed. You could almost hear Ned thinking "calm down, take a deep breath, count to ten before you say something rash..." everytime Lieberman would barge in on his responses.
As it is, Lieberman didn't get the knockout. And the post-debate commentary will garner more attention than the debate itself, and that's not looking too promising for Lieberman.
We'll round up that post-debate reaction as it emerges from the Connecticut punditry, but there are two big lies that Liebeman repeated that bear immediate rebuttal. I'll let Stoller take it from here:
The most significant lies were his assertions that he stood strong against Social Security from the first day Bush proposed privatization, and that he doesn't support an open-ended commitment in Iraq (he does in fact supports permanent military bases).
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., is undecided about the concept of using payroll taxes to fund private Social Security accounts, bringing to three the known number of Senate Democrats who have yet to publicly rule out the idea. President Bush has made the accounts the centerpiece of his domestic agenda. But other than Rep. Allen Boyd of Florida, no congressional Democrats have formally signed on. While Lieberman has concerns about the idea, he is continuing to study it while hoping for more details on Social Security from the president, a Lieberman aide said today. "He's still in a listening and learning stage and is keeping an open mind, but he does have concerns about private accounts as carve-outs that would potentially undermine the guaranteed minimum benefit and worsen our fiscal health and debt load," a Lieberman aide said today.
"We may, over the long term, with the consent of the new Iraqi government, establish some permanent bases in Iraq. And wouldn't that be a dramatic change, where we have an allied government there in Iraq, at the center of the Middle East, where we may have not a permanent police presence, but one or another military base that's working in cooperation with the government there?"
I lost faith in Lieberman during the social security debate, when he was the last Democrat to fall in line with the rest of the entire caucus (including people like Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu), and only did so when it was painfully obvious that the president's efforts to destroy social security where completely dead.
I even told that to a Time reporter, but of course that didn't make the story because it didn't fit the narrative that Lieberman's problems stem only from his war stance.
As for his war stance, I agree with Hillary Rosen, urging Lieberman to recant his vow to run as an independent sore loser if Lamont beats him in the primary:
Your complaints that a loss by you in the primary will prove that Democrats have a litmus test on the war will go by the wayside when Democratic Sens. Maria Cantwell, Dianne Feinstein, Ben Nelson and others are victorious in their primaries. These senators are not preparing for a third-party bid to undermine the Democrats; they are taking the heat, defending their votes and proving that they have core values that matter to Democratic voters. Instead of whining that this is all about the war, can you demonstrate a core commitment to Democratic Party principles?
In 2000, you didn't give up your Senate seat to run for vice president because you were afraid to give up the power. Rather than have confidence in the voters, you clung to power. Perhaps you are still pleased that you did, but it suggests to voters now that you will do anything to retain your power, including undermine the political system in Connecticut and hurt the Democratic Party.
For Lieberman, it's all about power. And he'll be as vicious, as rude, as boorish, and as dishonest as he needs to be to cling to it.
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