Jamie Weinstein

Liberals are once again engaging in their favorite sport: Joe Lieberman bashing.

The Connecticut senator and former Democratic vice-presidential nominee first drew liberal ire for his vocal support of President George W. Bush’s surge in Iraq. Now, Democrats are attacking him for pledging to stand with Republicans in filibustering the Senate health care bill if it contains a public option or a Medicare buy-in.

Statesman.

One influential liberal blogger, Jane Hamsher, is so enraged with Lieberman that she has asked the Susan B. Komen Foundation to fire Lieberman’s wife, Hadassah, from her role as international spokesperson for the breast cancer fighting charity. Hamsher has even implored celebrities associated with the organization to pressure the foundation to can Hadassah because of her husband’s position on the Senate health care bill. Talk about personal.

The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein went even farther by writing that Lieberman’s motivation in opposing the current Senate health care bill is nothing more than revenge against those liberals who opposed him in his 2006 Senate campaign. Worse, Klein charges, Lieberman “seems to be willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.”
What slander.

Joe Lieberman is a statesman senator. No matter how hard the left tries to tar Lieberman with unseemly labels and accusations, they can’t erase the fact that Lieberman risked his political career by endorsing John McCain for president.  In so doing, he provided all the evidence we need that he is a man who acts according to his conscience.

As I pointed out during the 2008 campaign when Democrats were lashing out at Lieberman as a political opportunist, the suggestion is laughable. Lieberman endorsed John McCain’s candidacy for president in the middle of December 2007. Was Joe convinced that by endorsing McCain he would be on the fast track to some fancy cabinet post?

Not a chance.

If you can’t remember back that far, it was widely believed that 2008 would be a Democratic year, as it turned out to be. So for Joe to back a Republican for president would have been an odd choice for a political opportunist.  But if you were an opportunist who only sought to increase your own power, backing John McCain of all Republicans vying for the presidency in mid-December 2007 would have been literally insane.

You see, in mid-December 2007, John McCain’s electoral prospects were near rock bottom. A week before Joe’s endorsement, a New York Times/CBS poll showed the Arizona senator tied with Fred Thompson for fourth place among Republican challengers, behind Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney. That poll had McCain attracting just 7 percent support.

The story of McCain’s phoenix-like rise to claim the Republican nomination is now political legend, but in mid-December when Joe Lieberman endorsed him it was only slightly better than a pipe dream.

Joe Lieberman endorsed McCain not because he was an opportunist. Joe Lieberman endorsed John McCain because he believed that his good friend was best suited to lead the United States of America in a time of war.

Lieberman acted like a statesman then. There was nothing in it for him. It was a long shot that McCain would win the Republican nomination, much less the presidency at the time Lieberman endorsed him. Lieberman must have understood that his endorsement of McCain had a very high chance of hurting his already-tenuous political position in the Democratic controlled Senate.
Now, Barack Obama and Harry Reid treated Lieberman more nicely than some may have expected by backing him to keep his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. They may have had their reasons. But this story demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that Lieberman is no opportunist or corporate dupe as his hyperbolic critics suggest. He is his own man acting in what he believes is in the best interest of the country.

Joe Lieberman and I may or may not agree on what healthcare bill should pass.  He may end up supporting a bill that many conservatives think is disastrous. But their should be no question that if he does so he is doing it because he thinks it is the right thing to do, just as he is currently opposing current Senate health care legislation because he feels it would be harmful for America.

It isn’t difficult to understand why liberals would be upset with Lieberman’s opposition to a proposal they so ardently want to pass.  It does not justify, however, the vicious and personal slanders being leveled against this good and decent man.

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