Back during one of my anti-Lieberman tirades, a DC insider warned me that Lieberman was being courted by Bush to be his new Secretary of Defense. And if we kept up the bashing, we might lose Lieberman to the administration. People in DC were freaking out at the possibility. It wasn't just the loss of a Senate seat. It was the potential of having Democrats lose ground amongst Jewish voters if the highest-profile Jewish senator essentially switched sides.
I said, "that's nice" and changed nothing. And Lieberman wasn't selected Secretary of State so it seemd much ado about nothing.
But the rumor has resurfaced (PDF).
SCHIEFFER: ...because there's a lot of talk. Last night--over this weekend, I had four different people tell me that the White House is thinking if the secretary of Defense goes over the next year--and a lot of people think that he will, that the president is thinking of nominating Joe Lieberman to be secretary of Defense. If he did that, would you support Lieberman?
If this happened, Ct. Gov. Jodi Rell would nominate his replacement, who would then have an incumbency advantage heading into the 2006 election. Who would that be? One of the state's existing Republican congressman, either Shays, Johnson, or Simmons? Would their "moderate" status protect them against the state's rabid anti-Bush mentality? Rell is now the nation's most popular governor, so being a Republican isn't necessarily the kiss of death in Connecticut.
Then again, this would be the best chance to get rid of someone who is corrossive to Democratic unity. And someone who is tragically wrong on the war. Would he better than Rumsfeld at the Pentagon? Yeah right. They're two peas from the same pod. The job should go to someone who has a firm grip on reality, not someone who will keep pretending we are turning corner after corner in Iraq.
So things would be a wash at the Pentagon. We'd lose a seat in the Senate, and add a seriously contested Senate race to the 2006 calendar. But, we could finally get rid of Lieberman and we'd stand a good chance of replacing him with a better Democrat, one who isn't typecast as the go-to Democrat for Fox News and the Wall Street Journal when they need a Democrat to bash other Democrats.
Not an easy call.