Reply #10: done 94% Sirota: "Joe Lieberman & the Hostile Takeover of 'Centrism'"

[tiptoe]

Joe Lieberman & the Hostile Takeover of "Centrism" by David Sirota, 05.30.2006

...the actual data shows Lieberman is the out-of-the-mainstream arch-right-winger, and the movement that is challenging him represents the real center.

This is not theoretical rhetoric or cocktail party chatter, as [Marshall] Wittman and his ilk in the pundit class have become specialists in peddling. This is cold, hard fact, backed up by cold, hard facts (you remember - those things so looked down upon inside the Beltway). On almost every major issue, the data shows that Lieberman is far to the right of the "center" or "mainstream" of American public opinion.

Take the Iraq War...How about Social Security?...On health care...How about corporate-written trade deals? Lieberman remains one of the most rock-solid supporters of pacts like NAFTA, WTO and China PNTR that were stripped of labor/wage/human rights/environmental protections and thus undermined American jobs, wages, and benefits...

The list goes on and on. Lieberman is called a "centrist" for reflexively voting for bigger and bigger Pentagon budgets. Yet, major national polls show the "centrist" position among the vast majority of the public is one that supports "deep cuts in defense spending, a significant reallocation toward deficit reduction, and increases in spending on education, job training, reducing reliance on oil, and veterans." Lieberman is called a "centrist" when he publicly brags about "co-sponsor the capital gains tax cut which finally passed in 1997." Yet, the same year he passed that tax cut for the wealthy, national polls showed that just 10 percent of Americans thought such a policy should be a priority for Congress. The dishonest labeling never seems to stop...