shawa CNO
Joined: 03 Sep 2004 Posts: 2004
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Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 10:30 am Post subject: Lieberman In Fight Of Political Life |
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A principled man, but the Left hates Lieberman because he won't hate Bush.
Quote: | WILL WEB WACKOS UNSEAT JOE?
By ERIC FETTMANN
June 14, 2006 -- JOE Lieberman suddenly finds himself facing the fight of his political life.
The polls increasingly suggest that Connecticut's three-term senator faces real trouble in the Aug. 8 Democratic primary from the blog-fueled antiwar challenge of Greenwich millionaire Ned Lamont.
In the Quinnipiac Poll, Lieberman's lead is down 21 points among all Democrats in just four weeks. And when undecided voters are asked how they're leaning, the senator's lead is just 55 percent to 40 percent - even though 76 percent of those same voters say they don't know much about the challenger.
But if Lieberman is in trouble among Democrats, then the entire Democratic Party is at risk. For, if the party's increasingly vitriolic and radical activists can claim Lieberman's scalp, then any Democrat who fails to toe their stridently partisan line may well be cowed into silence.
Lieberman's "sin," after all, isn't that he won't call for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq; most Capitol Hill Democrats agree with him. Or that he blindly supports President Bush's policies on Iraq; he doesn't - and has been strongly critical of the way the post-war effort has been carried out.
No, Lieberman is guilty of the worst crime that the Democrats' Dean wing can imagine - he doesn't hate and despise Republicans. He won't refer to George W. Bush as having been "selected, not elected" - though, as the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 2000, he'd have more reason than most to feel bitter about the outcome.
Even worse, he won't denounce the Iraq war as a mistake, as so many craven Democrats who once supported it have done, or apologize for his principled position. You won't hear a hint of the obscene chant "Bush lied and thousands died" coming from his lips.
Indeed, Lieberman still believes that toppling Saddam was the right thing to do - and that, as he said in a memorable speech last December, Iraq has become "a 'war of necessity' that we can't afford to lose."
Losing the war, though, seems to be precisely what those who are driving the Democratic base want - just as their parents, a generation ago, cheered the notion of an American defeat in Vietnam.
So this crowd was horrified by Lieberman's warning that "history will judge us harshly if we do not stretch across the divide to join together to complete our mission successfully in Iraq" and that "in matters of war, we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril."
Little surprise, then, that defeating Joe Lieberman topped the agenda at last weekend's "Yearly Kos" convention of left-wing Web-heads in Las Vegas. And there was no room for even the slightest dissent, either.
Cont'd: New York Post |
_________________ “I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” (Thomas Paine, 1776) |
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