OK, so it's obvious by now that the rules of the game are that Joe Lieberman is allowed to say absolutely anything on the issue of Iraq, no matter how ridiculous or false, no matter if he said the opposite last week or last month, without being called out by any politician on either side of the aisle.
Eric Kleefeld at TPM Cafe is on the case, going after national and local Louisiana and gulf coast politicians alike for their responses:
We thought this punt by Lieberman was pretty eye-opening. So we decided to call all the Dem Presidential hopefuls, all the Dems on Homeland Security, and a few Gulf Coast pols to get their reaction to it.
Now we have our first response. Congressman Charlie Melancon, a relatively conservative Democrat from Louisiana, has just hammered Lieberman's decision in an interview with Election Central.
"I'm just disappointed that he's not going to pursue it, particularly pursue it in terms of - I can understand that there's a whole lot of things we haven't had oversight on in six years - but Katrina is a major national occurrence."
They are still awaiting responses from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, Jim Webb, John Edwards, Carl Levin, Daniel Akaka, Thomas Carper, Mark Pryor, Mary Landrieu, Claire McCaskill, Jon Tester, John Breaux, and Gene Taylor. I'll be interested to see what, if anything, Landrieu says, in particular.
And the presidential candidates have an opportunity here - on both Katrina and Iraq - to distance themselves from the poisionous politics of the Lieberman Party... the first candidate to do so in major way will get a lot of attention from the netroots. Although, if Dodd's response is anything like his groveling mumblings yesterday, he will be letting the people of Louisiana and the gulf coast down just as much as Joe is:
On Joe Lieberman: "He's not taking a position yet. And, look, we're great friends. We had a bit of a difficulty last summer and fall with his race as an independent. But I was the chairman of Joe's campaign nationally for president. I nominated him when he ran for vice president. We have a good relationship, a good friendship. We disagree on some issues, this being one, on the Iraqi issue, this escalation. And, in time, I'm hopeful Joe will be supportive. But he's going to take his time I didn't ask him for his support. I'm sure it will work out."
Meanwhile, Markos cuts to the chase about how to handle all this:
We can't pretend to have operating control of the Senate until we take out Lieberman's "swing" role. We win a couple more Senate seats, and Reid will have the ability to toss Lieberman from his committee seats with little repercussion beyond Lieberman's predictable whines.
Lieberman stands in opposition to everything the American people demanded the last election -- an exit from Iraq and accountability for the administration. It is our job, in the next 21 months, to work toward relegating Lieberman to the dustbin of history.
MLN is powered by