
 |
|
May 20, 2013
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
August 7, 2006
/ 13 Menachem-Av, 5766
Lonely Lieberman
By
Paul Greenberg
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
How soon they forget.
Remember Joe Lieberman? It seems only yesterday that he was the toast of his party, but right now the junior senator from Connecticut is persona non grata among its upper reaches, including the editorial board of The New York Times. Predictably enough, it endorsed his opponent in Tuesday's primary. After all, the senator has been a staunch supporter of the war on terror, even in Iraq. That's just not done, not in ideologically correct quarters.
Sen. Lieberman must be feeling awfully lonely in the party that only six years ago nominated him as its candidate for vice president of the United States. (Or was that just a lovely dream?) When the unofficial organ of the American establishment endorses some previously anonymous rich guy rather than a longtime pillar of the Democratic Party, you know the pillar is shaking. And that the Democratic Party is about to come apart again, as it does from time to time.
What a pity, because Lonely Joe may be just about the last, forceful, unswerving Harry Truman/John F. Kennedy/Scoop Jackson Democrat still extant. His party has grown increasingly isolationist as this war has dragged on. And on. The senator's unforgivable sin isn't his rather conservative social values he could get by with those even in Connecticut but that he not only voted for this war in Iraq but still believes in it.
Imagine: Sen. Lieberman still thinks it was a good idea to change Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Even at this late date, he still speaks of "the liberation of Iraq" and says we can't afford to lose the war there. While criticizing various aspects of the administration's war policy (who doesn't?) he warns that pulling out would amount to "abandoning 27 million Iraqis to 10,000 terrorists."
No, the senator's views aren't very fashionable these days, certainly not in Connecticut. Or at least among its more ideologically with-it Democrats. The senator might not get a very warm welcome in some of his state's better homes and gardens. He'd probably be as welcome as Harry Truman was toward the tail end of the Korean War, which felt as if it, too, would never end by the time he left office. (HST's stock with the American people really didn't start to rise again until he was no longer president and history began to lend its usual perspective.)
It may not be his politics that so offend Sen. Lieberman's critics these days but his principles and his determination to stick with them. Why not trim his sails in order to win re-election? The problem, as the New York Post noted, is that he's got "courage and character." There you have two major political handicaps right there. And the senator may be about to pay the price for them.
If his state's Democrats reject him in the primary, they will have brought to completion the long process that began when the McGovernites rigged the rules to re-create the Democratic Party in their own image back in 1972. And eventually produced an electoral phenomenon that is still with us today: the Reagan Democrats. That's shorthand for the vast bloc of blue-collar, often unionized, socially conservative, churchgoing, largely Catholic big-city voters who were once the keystone of the old Roosevelt coalition. And who just couldn't take McGovernism.
Even now those voters may have less in common with The New York Times' politics than the New York Post's, which has just endorsed Sen. Lieberman in the Connecticut primary. (The Post describes his fashionable opponent as a member of "the Michael Moore wing" of the Democratic Party.)
No wonder Bill Clinton was in Connecticut campaigning for Sen. Lieberman the other day; the former president's centrist vision of his party's future will suffer a definite if not decisive blow if it no longer has room for the likes of a Joe Lieberman.
It'll certainly be a blow to the remaining Democrats in the U.S. Senate if, having lost the primary, Joe Lieberman wins re-election as an independent. It's happened before. Remember Lowell Weicker?
Connecticut may be a dependably blue state but it's not much for party loyalty, whether Republican or Democratic. Should he decide to leave his party or rather, if his party decides to jettison him Lonely Joe might find a lot of friends among Connecticut Republicans, probably enough to win a three-way general election in November.
Another divisive war was raging back in 1972 when George McGovern won the Democratic presidential nomination on a platform remarkably similar to anti-war sentiment today ("Come Home America!"). Sen. McGovern then proceeded to lose the election in one of the most lopsided verdicts in the history of American presidential politics.
There might be a lesson somewhere in all this for those Democrats now yelling so loudly for Lonely Joe's scalp.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.
Paul Greenberg Archives
© 2006 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|