RAGGED THOTS: When One Issue Is Enough To Be Republican...

Monday, August 14, 2006

When One Issue Is Enough To Be Republican...

That issue, being of course, support for the Iraq War! On everything else, Joe ain't no Republican:

In key votes of the last Congress selected by the Almanac of American Politics, Lieberman followed the straight liberal line in opposing oil drilling in ANWR, Bush tax cuts, overtime pay reform, the energy bill, and bans on partial birth abortion and same-sex marriage. Similarly, he voted in support of Roe v. Wade, and for banning assault weapons and bunker buster bombs. His only two pro-Bush votes were to fund the Iraq war and support missile defense (duplicating Sen. Hillary Clinton's course on both).

Lieberman's most recent ratings by the American Conservative Union were 7 percent in 2003, zero in 2004 and 8 percent in 2005. "Well deserved!" ACU Chairman David Keene told me. "I don't see why any conservative should be overly concerned about Joe Lieberman's plight."

Lieberman has opposed Bush as the environmentalists' Senate leader on global warming. He rebuffed attempts to compromise Social Security reform. He had a perfect record, seven for seven, backing filibusters that blocked Bush judicial nominees. He voted for cloture on three judicial nominations only after a compromise by the bipartisan Gang of 14 (which included Lieberman). He voted against confirming Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

Of course, for many people, that one issue is enough to open up the fiscal spigots:

A Republican campaign fund-raiser based in Washington, who spoke on condition that he not be identified by name, said, “There’s a definite sense among a significant number of the Republicans who I deal with that Joe Lieberman is a man of principle and a man we should support.”

This fund-raiser said he’ll contribute money to Lieberman’s campaign and raise money for him.

He noted that there is a school of thought in GOP ranks that sees Lamont as extreme in his views and would like to see him win in November. These Republicans think it would be tactically advantageous for their party to have Lamont in the Senate during the run-up to the 2008 presidential campaign so that they could say to voters, “Look at what we’re running against.”

But this source said he himself didn’t take that view, saying “There are a lot of
people who’d like to say to Moveon.org, ‘It’s dangerous to squelch bipartisan
leaders like Joe Lieberman.’”

Moveon.org is the anti-Bush group which worked to defeat Lieberman in last Tuesday's primary. Last week Moveon.org's Eli Pariser said the group members "made 77,000 calls to get Connecticut voters to the polls and put Lamont over the top."

While I wouldn't take, ahem, a gamble on Alan Schlesinger, Republicans could do a far better job of running a real candidate in Connecticut -- particularly given that there is a very popular Republican governor who could lend her aide to a candidate whose actually gotten more than a third of the vote in Connecticut before -- and could arguably win a split-Democrat race.

But, hey, maybe that option's too much to ask the national party to help bring about. Because, hey, Joe's good on the war -- and that's all that counts, eh?

Technorati Tags: Joe Lieberman, Republicans, Iraq