AP: Lieberman's Pro-War Views Concern Dems

[Eugene]

Lieberman's Pro-War Views Concern Dems

By ANDREW MIGA
Associated Press Writer

December 10, 2005, 4:04 AM EST

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Joe Lieberman's staunch stay-the-course defense of President Bush's
Iraq policies isn't winning him any friends among fellow Democrats.

Lieberman's pro-war views may be winning him praise from a grateful White House, but some
Democratic colleagues see him as undercutting their party's efforts to wrest control
of Congress from the GOP next fall.

"He's doing damage to the ability of Democrats to wage a national campaign," said Ken Dautrich,
a University of Connecticut public policy professor. "It's Lieberman being Lieberman. And it's
frustrating for people trying to put a Democratic strategy together."

<snip>

The Bush Administration, meanwhile, can't seem to get enough of the senator who has sided
with the president on many foreign policy, defense and homeland security issues.

<snip>

Full article: http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-lieberman-dems,0,4712150.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

[lvx35]

1. Can we boot him out somehow?

I mean, he's a republican, we've been saying it for years. Can we make him just be part of his party?

[Sapphocrat]

2. Something that amazed me while in Australia...

...was all the uproar about this one MP who crossed the aisle to vote against his own party. Big deal, right? Well, it was a big deal, because it almost never happens, and is grounds for kicking him out of his party!

Can you imagine anything like that in the U.S.?

On one hand, we'd love to do the same to Moldy Joe; on the other hand, it made me ask why Australia has individual MPs at all if they're always going to vote in lockstep.

Anyway, in other places, there are consequences for politicans whose actions betray their parties.

[lvx35]

3. I just wish the principles were a little more well defined.

I mean the democratic party is based on a philosophy, that when the people are well informed, they can be trusted with decision making. So here are the people, and they know what's going on with this Iraq war, and they are against it, according to the polls. So why is Joe against them??? Does he think they are NOT well informed, and if so, why isn't he trying to inform us why this 500 billion dollar fuck explosion is such a good idea???

[Sapphocrat]

8. Yeah, that's pretty much it...

...and it's one of the liabilities of indirect representation: We elect people based on what we perceive to be their values, knowing full well they're under no contract to represent us. We're gambling on the hope that most of the time, their desires will mesh with ours.

And then you get a Lieberman... or a Feinstein, who told her constituents who, like me, begged her not to vote for the IWR, telling us in no uncertain terms that if she were to vote the way the majority of us wanted, she would vote against it... but essentially that she knew best.

Now we're talking about the very basis of the sort of "representation" we've had in this country since its inception -- and in many ways, it simply does not work. Look at the electoral college for an example of an archaic system still in place for no other reason than that's the way it's always been done. It was set up that way because the Powers That Be thought the people too stupid (or at least too uninformed) to be charged with the responsibility of direct voting.

As one-third of my own misrepresention in Washington is mishandled by a another DINO in the Lieberman mold (Feinstein), I am sorely tempted to say that the congressional model is as outmoded and useless as the electoral college. (I'll stop short of saying that as long as I still have Boxer in the Senate and Eshoo in the House.)

So, why is Moldy Joe betraying his entire party? For the same reason Blair betrays the U.K., and Howard makes a mockery of the democratic process in Australia: Because they think they're going to get richer, or more powerful by doing so.

Power is a cancer.

[izzie]

4. Who cares. Every one has a right to think as he wishes.

If his voters do not like it they will vote him out. Lots of Dem. think we should not pull every one out. I think we should. I am sick of wars. I am over 70 and I do not recall any time we have not been at war with some one. I am just plain sick of it and I live off a service pension so it is not that I have not lived that life.

[kentuck]

6. But it's not just about his "voters"...

It's about his "Party". He has divided our Party in favor of Bush and the illegal invasion of Iraq... It does matter that there were no WMDs and that we were lied too and people are dying because of it. Perhaps not to Joe Lieberman but to the majority of Democrats, imo..

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. Why does the Democratic party need Lieberman for a national

policy? If Lieberman wants to be a loose cannon, then cut him loose. Why is his vote necessary for a national Dem policy?

[gizmo1979]

7. Maybe he's running with Hillary?

She seems to be fairly hawkish on the war.