Junto Boys

LIEBERMAN AND THE DEBATE

Joe Lieberman had the toughest job up there. While plenty of moderates in a general election might find him a safe choice, among primary Democrats he’s swimming upstream. They don’t want to hear about why the war's justified. Lieberman has to struggle a lot to separate himself from President Bush. His war comments last night sounded Republican. Other than a comment about Americans not having health insurance, he didn't sound much like a Democrat. He mostly said he's the Democrat that Bush doesn't want to run against.

Lieberman’s criticism on the stump is that the war was justified but Bush bungled the peace. When has America not bungle the peace?

Wilson’s bungled utopian vision after World War I caused the rise of Nazism. FDR’s bungled negotiations with Stalin bungled the World War II peace and caused the Iron Curtain to go up over Eastern Europe. The bungled Korean cease-fire means that North Korea is still a threat 50 years later. We signed the cease-fire with Vietnam a number of times instead of declaring war and winning. If Lieberman wants to complain that things aren’t so smooth in a war zone, he might want to give historical examples of how we won the peace.

Lieberman is a natural Republican, but he missed his chance. In 1998, he was the loudest Democrat critic of Clinton’s lying to a Grand Jury, but like the rest of that bunch he voted that it had no bearing on whether Clinton should be President. It would have been a great time to vote against Clinton, switch parties and join the majority. Instead, he ignored his own criticisms, turned his back and became the right flank of the Democrat Party. His loyalty won him a Veep nod in 2000, but that failed. On his own, he’s too conservative for his party. He won’t get this nomination. He’s chosen his destiny. He’ll spend the rest of his political life as a senator in a minority party.

DEBATE TRANSCRIPT