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Friday, August 18, 2006

Joe Lieberman and the dream of bipartisanship

The Connecticut Senate race in the general election in November is shaping up to be a continuation of the Lieberman-Lamont duel. Lieberman has been effectively adopted by his good friends Dick Cheney and Karl Rove to be the de facto Republican nominee.

He's earned a nickname among his opponents, "Holy Joe", based on his reputation for sanctimony. I think it's kind of a dorky nickname. But it seems to have stuck. There's even a short form, "HoJo", which they use a lot at the FireDogLake blog, which has focused heavily on the Connecticut Senate contest, including some original reporting. Yes, I suppose "HoJo" could be understood as something else, too, i.e., an unkind reference to his willingness to prostitute himself politically to the Reps.

As authoritarian as today's Republican Party is, Dick and Karl and the gang have swown some real tactical flexibility at times, and this is one of those cases. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who's currently acting the "moderate", provided a Republican statehouse even though he does take positions differernt from the Christian Right line that dominates the national party. And going out of their way to promote Lieberman as a martyr to the "angry Democrats" is another example.

But it's tactical flexibility rather than any real "moderation" deserving of the name. Schwarzenegger has pandered to the extreme nativists who promote vigilante border guards. In the recall election he won in in 2003, he used a similar tactic to the Bush campaign of staging events where only supporters were admitted.

HoJo has a generally liberal voting record. But his value to the Reps has been that he was not only willing to support Bush on the Iraq War and on the critical cloture vote on the Alito Supreme Court nomination. He's also been willing and eager to denounce Democrats every chance he gets, using essentially Republican scripts to do so. If he gets elected as an independent but votes as part of the Republican Party in the Senate (called "caususing with the Republicans"), his value to the Reps would be considerably diminished. His value is that he's a Democrat touting the Republican line in attacking other Democrats.

Joe Conason reports on how flexible HoJo has sometimes been willing to be in campaigning: Whatever's best for Holy Joe Salon 08/18/06

Josh Marshall has a good post on HoJo as martyr.

Marshall has been pointing out that the Lamont campaign may have committed a tactical error, though hardly a fatal one, in the week after the primary. HoJo was all over the TV and the newspapers positioning himself as the man of principle who had been wronged by his own party. While Lamont went on vacation and was much less visible.

Marshall also used the Lieberman-Lamont contest as a takeoff point to discuss how his own views on partisanship have changed during the Cheney-Bush administration in an 08/14/06 post. Basically, he had not thought of himself as a partisan hardliner before, but now doesn't really see an alternative:

I live in Manhattan and have a certain perspective on the country. Folks in Oklahoma or evangelicals in South Carolina have a different one. And that's fine. It's their country too. What I think is that a certain political movement has taken over the country - call it movement conservatism in its late, degraded form - and wants to govern it by all or nothing rules.

The Bush presidency is in so many respects an example or embodiment of this. The president twice took the presidency with a divided electorate - first a minority president, then a 51% president. And he proceeded to govern as though he had a mandate to completely remake it, often in what appeared to be profoundly destructive ways geared to short-term political benefit and intended to consolidate power. The folks who've made efforts toward bipartisan compromise have again and again, in this era, been played for chumps. And that's one of the reasons President Bush has had a much harder time in his second term (one among many): he made it too clear too many times that he'll take anyone who'll give him an inch or lend him a hand and use them up and toss them when he's done.

Our policies abroad are a whole other matter. They're related to what I've described above, part of the same story. But there's more there. President Bush and his acolytes and enablers deserve all the blame in the world. But it's not sufficient. As Americans I think we need to grapple with what's happened. And it goes beyond President Bush. He did after all win reelection. He marginally expanded his congressional majorities. In the rough and tumble of the political moment, the fight needs to be taken to the president and his party. But we also need a more probing consideration of the forces that have made all this possible.

Steve Gilliard on Friday responded to a commenter who suggested that liberals and bloggers stop focusing so much attention on HoJo:

The problem is that Lieberman is the flying wedge for the GOP. He can say the Dems are weak and captive of radicals, and bolster Bush at the same time.

Taking him out is the number one priority because his continued presence hurts all races, especially the Connecticut House races. He is literally their lifesaver. Joe attacking Dems hurt all Dems, in all their races. Ignoring him would be suicidal. Getting him out of the race should be the priority.Not just for Connecticut Dems, but for the entire party

Lieberman was a horribly divisive character and unless his political career is ended, other Dems will pay.

posted at 4:21:00 PM by Bruce Miller

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