The Dem Love-Hate Relationship with Senator Lieberman ...

Connecticut?s Courant has this as part of a lengthy article regarding the retiring Jewish Senator Joe Lieberman: Lieberman?s evolution over the years brought him a series of new friends and supporters, including McCain, Bush, and Fox News commentator Sean Hannity. It also brought him a small army of political enemies who coalesced around a previously unknown anti-war candidate named Ned Lamont to defeat Lieberman in the 2006 U.S. Senate primary.

But Lieberman says he was vindicated with his greatest political victory in November 2006, made possible by a coalition largely made up of Republicans and independents. That proved to be his final campaign in a career that is now closing after 40 years in public service, including 24 years in the U.S. Senate.

In Connecticut, many liberal Democrats increasingly soured on Lieberman?s hawkish stances on defense and his support of Republican views. He was at his peak when he made history as the first Jewish American on a major party ticket, but his later views on the war in Iraq prompted many Democrats to deride him as a controversial and divisive figure.

Lieberman supporters believe that it was the Democratic Party ? more than Lieberman ? that changed through the years, as evidenced by the party?s blistering opposition to the Iraq war.

Lieberman himself attributed the change to ?a very unusual series of events in which I had different opportunities? involving ?different times and different people and different relationships that I had,? including his close friendship with McCain?

At the other end of the spectrum, hard-core liberals and some true-blue Democrats regret voting for Lieberman in his earlier days and say they would never do so again.

Consumer activist Ralph Nader says that Lieberman turned into ?a right-wing extremist on everything except the environment and gay rights? in the Senate.

?He started out as a promising environmentalist when he was a junior senator, and he turned into one of the leading warmongers for the American empire and an uncritical advocate for the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about,? Nader said in an interview. ?He never met a weapon system that he didn?t like. ? Look how Lieberman betrayed his own party. I?m not a fan of the Democratic Party. This is a guy who stood at the Republican National Convention, next to McCain. He supports the opponent. He describes Obama as immature, inexperienced. He comes back to the Senate, and they give him his chairmanship back!?

Despite the public clashes with friends, Lieberman has always rebounded. Even though Lieberman supported McCain over Obama in 2008, it was Obama who stepped in and said Lieberman should remain as the chairman of the Senate homeland security committee at a time when some Democrats were still angry. Although Lieberman was the first Senate Democrat to publicly scold then-President Bill Clinton in a memorable speech on the Senate floor during the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998, it was Clinton who traveled to Waterbury eight years later to rally support for Lieberman when he was on the ropes in the bitter primary. Clinton told the crowd that day that Lieberman was his longtime friend, and ?I love him.?

Source: http://gestetnerupdates.com/2012/12/30/the-dem-love-hate-relationship-with-senator-lieberman/

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