Imagine that you are a Connecticut Republican. It’s November. Your gubernatorial candidate is polling ahead in double digits. Your Senatorial candidate doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. Why even bother to go to polls? Where’s the excitement? In your Congressional race? All that way down the ticket? Nah. There’s no juice in that.
But what if your party leaders tell you it’s critical to save the world from terrorism and elect Joe Lieberman? What if the Lieberman/Lamont race is polling within the margin of error? Yeah!! Then maybe you can get excited about voting. And while you are there at the polls, of course you will vote for your Republican representative.
That’s the theory anyway. There are three Republican representatives that are at grave risk of being thrown out of Congress. If Lieberman were to drop out, Lamont would win Connecticut in a walk and Republican turnout could be depressed all over the state. But with Lieberman still in the race, and Republicans rallying to his side rather than supporting their own candidate, Lieberman is ahead in the polls and may well pull off a victory. Ari Fleisher explains another reason why this is a good thing for the GOP:
“It would be far better for Republicans if Joe Lieberman won than Lamont,” Mr. Fleischer continued. “There are enough liberals for Republicans to point to — from Russ Feingold to Hillary Clinton to Nancy Pelosi — that we don’t need another one to make our case. But what kind of message would it send if a strong defense, pro-Iraq senator won in this environment? It would prove you can be for what George W. Bush is doing in Iraq and still win, even in the Northeast.”
I love Ari. He is such a sniper. Hillary the liberal. Okay. Next we’ll be calling Newt Gingrich a moderate. Oh wait???
“The right thing for people who believe the world is deeply dangerous is to re-elect Lieberman,” Mr. Gingrich said. That is especially true, he said, because “the Republican Party’s own candidate does not have any possibility of winning.”
I guess William Kristol is becoming a moderate now, too.
“For me, it’s an uncomplicated decision,” said William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard and a neoconservative who is helping Mr. Lieberman through an independent group called Vets for Freedom, which is helping to raise funds and providing strategic advice for the senator.
“Partisan Republicans may be ambivalent; they see a partisan advantage to Lamont,” he said. But, he said, “Foreign policy hawks and Bush doctrine believers and prowar types, we want Lieberman to win.”
Progressive Democrats have been arguing for several years that Joe Lieberman was a trojan horse within our party. People at The New Republic thought we were hyperventilating, engaging in a purge, being anti-Semitic, or some other thing. But now you can see for yourself. PNAC founder and lead cheerleader for expanding the war in the Middle East, William Kristol, endorses Lieberman. Newt ‘Let’s Let Medicare Wither on the Vine’ Gingrich endorses Lieberman. The party is giving no money to their candidate. They’ve even asked him to drop out. And why?
Because they are worried about their three house seats and they want to be able to argue that Bushism is popular (at least, survivable) even in the northeast.
If Joe Lieberman wants to be used like this, that’s great.
What are the chances of Lamont pulling off a stunning victory over the “new” Republican?
pretty good.
Remember, he can run commercials showing Newt and Bill Kristol and Cheney supporting Joe.
That is much scarier to Connecticut voters than Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
If I were Lamont, I would ‘Newt’ Lieberman, tagging him as nothing more than a trojan horse for the Republican Party, defense contractors, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Another thing every one seems to be forgetting. Lieberman has made it very clear that he is a vindictive bastard who takes his primary loss personally. It is logical that he also takes the desertion of many of his fellow elected Democrats to Lamont and talk of getting stripped of his seniority personally.
If Lieberman wins it will be because of Republican money and Republican dirty tricks. Can any one doubt that Lieberman will feel that the Democrats deserted him and the Republicans came to his aid? If he does not change parties officially, I suspect that Lieberman will become a de facto Republican. In fact his promise to caucus with the Democrats is more a threat than an advantage because he will be, for all intents and purposes, a Republican mole.
“Vets for Freedom” is already on the ground in Connecticut mounting a “bi-partisan” campaign on Lieberman’s behalf. They are a Karl Rove tool masking as a non-profit 527. They were founded by a former White House press official and their Connecticut efforts are being directed by William Kristol and Dan Senor, a senior White House political operative who Juan Cole once suggested was a Neocon mole planted in L. Paul Bremer’s staff in Iraq by the Pentagon.
There is no way these things could be allowed to happen without Joe Lieberman’s knowledge and consent. He has also hired a high-profile pollster whose clientele seems to have previously consisted only of Republicans, including Rick Santorum. My guess is that the prominent Democratic pollsters wanted nothing to do with Lieberman, so the Republicans gave him one of theirs own. Lieberman is a Republican, and if he is re-elected he will act more like one than he ever has before. In fact, he will probably see voting with the Republicans as pay back.
are you predicting a Zell Miller moment for Joe?
I very nearly said that in my comment and then thought better of it.
The shear fact that leiberman has all these outstanding republicans supporting him in this race is a definite telling piece. If I were leiberman and I were getting such support, this would embarrass me to not end. If the democrats in dc can not see the hypocrisy in this, they need to have eye surgery. Leiberman need to loose his seat on the committees he is on….period. This alone would wake ppl up and tell them and leiberman that he is not at all who he claims he is..What is wrong with Reid? I hope that leiberman looses so badly he is left with nothing but shame after this all is done.
I think the polls will prove very wrong come election day. People have not yet absorbed the twists and turns in this story. When they do, Dems and Indies will find it much harder to go with Joe. This assumes that Lamont hits hard on the “Lieberman is a Bushie” theme.
In the meantime Lieberman is in an impossible position. He’s been trying to sell himself as the “real Democrat”. Unless he does a humiliating flipflop, he’s stuck with that. It’s hard to believe that lots of Republicans will vote for the “real Democrat” when the time comes, no matter what their discredited leaders are peddling.
I think Joe is done unless Lamont goes all whitebread and passive.
And didn’t Lieberman attack Lamont for being “too Republican” when he voted with Republicans on the Greenwich Planning Board years ago? No hypocrite he.