As if to remind us that Connecticut has another U.S. Senator, Joe Lieberman has said a not-all-that-surprising thing which will, as usual, bring the cameras right to his door.
“I probably will support some Republican candidates for Congress or Senate in the election in 2010. I’m going to call them as I see them,” Lieberman said.
Lieberman also said whether he’d seek the Democratic nomination in 2012 is an “open question.” Well, yeah.
At this point I’ve come to agree with Maura Keaney’s thesis that Joe Lieberman is the Balloon Boy’s dad of the Senate. He just wants to get on someone’s reality show. He doesn’t want to actually accomplish anything beyond that.
Why would I think that? Because, despite all his talk about how being an independent allows him to get things done, what has Joe Lieberman done this year? Hell, what has he really done, legislation-wise, since 2006? His main reason for being seem to be infuriating Democrats and getting on TV. I suppose he’s been successful… but wasn’t his vaunted bipartisanship supposed to allow him to reach across the aisle, craft compromises and help pass important legislation? Where’s the Lieberman Compromise on health care, for instance?
Chris Dodd, love him or hate him, is right at the center of credit card reform, financial regulations reform, and health care reform, among other things. He’s been active and present, while Joe Lieberman has mostly whined and threatened from the sidelines.
That’s all we get out of Lieberman anymore: threats, complaints and little bombshell announcements that brings the press running. As a media draw, he’s still got it. As a senator? 2012 can’t come soon enough for me.
15 responses so far ↓
Palpatine is waiting for the day after election day 2012 to announce his switch to the GOP party revealing his disfigured face and shouting “Power! Unlimited power!”
I totally disagree with your analysis on this. I don’t agree with Lieberman on a lot of issues but to say he is only bi-partisan just to get attention isn’t fair. In the same article he says that he will support Dodd. If he really wanted to get attention he’d say that he MIGHT be open to supporting a Republican. But nope, it sounds pretty definitive that he is with Dodd.
I think Lieberman does whatever he thinks is best at that given point. I often disagree with his conclusions but I think we should respect him for his honesty and sincerity (not insincerity as you suggest).
Just because he doesn’t vote lock step with Harry Reids far left agenda doesn’t make him a bad guy.
Well, either he’s honestly and sincerely a complete idiot, with no regard for his constituents and no ability to judge what’s best for his country (the U.S.) and his state (CT) or he’s an attention hungry lunatic with self-aggrandisement as his only goal. I can’t decide.
Or, Lieberman’s trying to get rich, as Glenn Greenwald suggests.
Here’s Greenwald on Rachel Maddow’s show:
I think clearly what it’s about is primarily that fact that the industry that he’s serving by doing this—by preventing competition with the public option—is an industry from which he receives very substantial benefits. He’s drowning in campaign contributions from the insurance industry, the health care industry, the pharmaceutical industry—more than $2.5 million.
In early 2005 his wife was hired by a large P.R. firm, Hill & Knowlton, in the pharmaceutical division, which at the time was representing the health care giant Glaxo in major legislation before the Senate. And several months later Joe Lieberman was on the floor of the Senate offering legislation that would directly steer huge amounts of incentives to that company in order to develop vaccines.
So I think what you’re seeing here is the kind of legalized corruption, legalized bribery that runs the United States Senate; only in this case it’s particularly sleazy and transparent because Lieberman is ready to gut the major initiative of the Democratic Party.
This is the sort of “security breech” that makes journalists fall on their knees and exclaim with loud hosannas – “There is a God!”
Owing to an accidental security breech, the deliberations of the US Congressional Ethics Committee have now been flushed into the public square.
Reporters are now sifting through the detritus.
An advanced copy of the report, I am told, has been secured by Ken Krayeske.
Watch out!
>>he’s an attention hungry lunatic with self-aggrandizement as his only goal.
No, that would be Atty. General Blumenthal.
ha! Catastrophes in the making.
Dodd should know the correct answer is to begin a serious discussion about:
1) ending fiat money
2) ending fractional reserve banking
3) ending the federal reserve
But instead he spends his time speaking to Jane Hamsher about something he will never do… ask Bernanke for the names of the bailout banks.
I am a Republican and I would not want Joe Lieberman any where near me or my party. He needs to retire–preferably to another state.
I dont believe Lieberman is on a quest to get rich, he already is rich by any measurable standard.I think he votes and acts the way he does out of principle…his principle.The only time he takes the voter into account is when the voters agree with his stance on an issue, otherwise he does his own thing.He seems to like being the contrarian role in the Democratic Caucus and the attention it brings.I for one, find myself virtually 100 % in disagreement with his political views and stances to the extent that 2012 wont come soon enough for me.
If you’re driving a car off a cliff, it’s always a bit ingenuous to claim that the passenger in the back seat crying “Halt! is “whining.
Hey DP,
The car went off the cliff during the W misadministration. No whining was heard then, strangely. Obama is running a rescue operation and Joe Lie is blocking it. What a hero.
oldswede
oldswede,
Obama’s rescue operation is not simply a continuation of Bush’s. It is 1) quantitatively different. One understands the difference between 1 trillion and 4 trillion. And it is 2) qualitatively different. Bush didn’t initiate policies that would have the effect of destroying the insurance industry in CT, Dodd’s and Lieberman’s home turf. At some point Obama and his chorus are going to have to stop whining that everything is Bush’s fault. Man-up. Take ownership. It’s the least a president who vowed change can do.
There were plenty of conservatives, some of them Republicans, who objected to Bush’s reckless spending, and you won’t find one of them saying the improvident spending was OK because he was followed by St. Obama, who contibued his policies.
>>There were plenty of conservatives, some of them Republicans, who objected to Bush’s reckless spending
Not just the new so-called “conservatives” who only seem to count social conservatives as “authentic”; plenty of Goldwater conservatives (marry your goldfish for all we care) were equally astounded.
That many of us failed to post attack pieces was more to do with the end of his term, and the 11th commandment, than any lack of actual horror.
BTW – Lurkers, etc.
Allow me to exempt the one major social conservative worthy of even this libertarian/Republican’s support.
*SOME* social conservatives, notably Peter Wolfgang, enjoy such substantial intellectual integrity that they’ll line up on the majority of non-social conservative issues (even those issues that fail to interest them) rather than violate an alliance.
Peter is thus exempt from any “there they go again” charges, as he does not play the same one-way game that others in his camp have been guilty of for decades.
He certainly will not be reelected in his next election. Hopefully he won’t make is a painful exit for CT.
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