The Daily Campus

Issue date: 4/28/08 Section: Commentary

The sight of a sitting senator out stumping for a presidential candidate is hardly ever a surprising proposition. Republicans and Democrats push hard for elected officials to head out and support the party standard-bearers through the lengthy and critical presidential election cycle. Once-proud Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is heading that call - only his support and vote are going for John McCain, the Republican nominee.

Truth be told, Connecticut should have seen it coming. After his defeat to Ned Lamont in the 2006 Democratic party primary, Lieberman became the poster-child for Connecticut Republicans seeking to keep the far-more-liberal Lamont from rising to power. Lieberman ran as an independent on the Connecticut For Lieberman Party and won with overwhelming Republican support.

If Lieberman wants to cross the aisle and complete his transformation from a closeted Republican to a hawk, it is certainly his prerogative. But to do such under the guise of transcendent bi-partisanship when what he really is doing is stiffing both his former party and once loyal supporters is simply revolting.

Due to the razor-thin margin by which the Democrats hold power in the Senate, majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has done the wise and amicable thing by making Lieberman, despite his stark and vocal differences with Democrats on key issues, the chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

But with Lieberman's current boisterous support for an interminable war and a Republican would-be president, it is clear that Lieberman's ties to his old party and his own ideology are waning. If the Democrats, as they seem positioned to do, are able to secure a larger majority in the Senate in November, look for the chairman's gavel to be swiftly taken from Lieberman and watch as he completes his Republican transformation.

Feeling spurned by the party he was once a member of, it seems as though for Lieberman, politics is about personal advantage. When he announced his run for president in 2003, he was quick to decry the slow and meager George Bush administration anti-terrorism response. Now that he is supporting the Republican nominee, Lieberman unsurprisingly finds that same terrorism response to be comprehensive and appropriate. His trip to Iraq with McCain is a gratuitous beefing-up of his Republican credentials signaling perhaps the inevitability of an eventual party change.

The McCain campaign is considering a Lieberman keynote address at the Republican National Convention, a la Zell Miller's rabid address in 2004. If he accepts, Lieberman's turncoat transformation will be complete.

If Lieberman believes his politics are an honest and heroic form of representation, he should know Connecticut already has an official state hero. That figure is Nathan Hale.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools