Have we fallen so far in this country that someone asserting an opinion different than what he’s told to say by some other predictable automaton is worthy of contempt?
Do we elect people who will do what they think is right or do we elect people that are so completely inflexible and uncompromising that we need not bother electing them?
I suppose this should not come as surprise to me. Naturally robots that can’t do anything but pull the (D) or (R) lever can’t stand people that think for themselves because they are incapable of doing so.
He was also quite effusive in praising Obama back then. I agree that the CT Democrats who supported him are probably not happy.
It depends on the issue, though. If the GOP is filibustering on a Supreme Court appointment, for example, it’s unlikely he’ll vote with them.
Right now it looks like the Democrats won’t get to 60 votes, though. So they would probably take away his committee chairmanships, which is the same as kicking him out.
It’s not about him being himself or having his own opinions; it’s about him being a weasel about it; he did it to keep himself in office, not out of some higher sense of purpose. And he did it at a time when his party really needed him, when all this Bush BS was getting rammed through. Any Democrat is welcome to vote with the Republicans if his constituents or conscience tells him to do so. But it was the way he did what he did, that he was not just thinking for himself, but only of himself, that makes him untrustworthy on a basic level, IMHO.
I agree, too. I don’t happen to like Lieberman, but the fact that he’s chosen to endorse McCain over Obama doesn’t make him a traitor. He obviously feels McCain’s experience trumps Obama’s new-fangled ideas. He’s wrong, but he’s entitled to his opinion on the matter, just as much as all the prominent Republicans who have endorsed Obama across party lines are.
It isn’t that he ran as an independent, it is how he went about it. It isn’t that he endorsed McCain, it is how he went about it. You can leave your party with dignity. You can disagree with your party and be respected. Lieberman’s actions have been consistently disgraceful.
Lieberman wanted to run in the 2006 election as an “Independent Democrat,” but the law prohibited him from using a party name that contained the name of another party. That’s where the Connecticut for Lieberman name came from. What the argument is here, exactly, I don’t know anymore.
Wanting another vote is not the same as being willing to pay the price for it. Reid et al. may well decide that having Lieberman in their caucus is more trouble than he’s worth.
I don’t see a downside to not inviting him to caucus. With or without Lieberman, after this election, the Democrats will be the clear majority, which gets them all of the procedural things like president pro tem, committee assignments, etc., and that’s all that the caucus decides. Lieberman is probably going to vote on bills and on clotures and the like the same way whether he caucuses with the Dems or not.
