Explaining Lieberman.
I saw this quote at dailykos, from Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.
“I think it is perfectly clear that most Americans will treat the vote to get on the bill as a vote on the substance of the bill. So our view is that cloture on the motion to proceed to the bill is a vote to endorse a half a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts, $400 billion in new taxes, and higher insurance — health insurance premiums for everyone else.
Preen all you want, but sharp eyed partisan observers usually view this procedural as tantamont to vote passage — and I’ll link to one example in a moment. I suppose some matters depend, roughly, on how toxic you view such and such a bill. I imagine this dailykos poster would view things differently sometime in the Bush Administration, for instance.
Now, you can make principled stances for backing off the Filibuster before voting nay. The problem with Joseph Lieberman is that he shows little consistency with these things.   Yesterday, Lieberman defended his threat to join a Republican Filibuster as a Senator’s prerogative. This differs markedly from the Bush Administration — there are two items in this huffington post slide-show that are relevant. — when he  voted for cloture on the Bankruptcy Reform Bill before voting for it — and arguing that vote in his election contest against Ned Lamont. (See too the double-backing partisan rule as against Mitch McConnell from liberal bloggers.) I distinctly remember an interview where Lieberman was lobbed the question of his cloture vote, where he hemmed and hawed until a commercial break saved him from explaining his duplicity. The other famous stand on filibusters came when he was one of the “Gang of 14”, stating that filibusters would end in “all but extraordinary circumstances.”
Interesting, and for the sake of consistency that should drive him to a different stance today on Health Care Reform. Sadly, no.
I hasten to add I’m mistaken in calling him inconsistent on this score, as there is one consistency to his procedural voting. Like any good partisan, he lines up for one party’s Filibusters and against the other party’s Filibusters. But everyone already knew that.
But, I guess, this quote is supposed to absolve something or other. “Joseph Lieberman is the least of Harry Reid’s problems.” — Harry Reid. I suspect third person references to yourself is a tell of some type, but I’m not sure a tell of what.
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Modest update regarding where he went for support for his 2006 General Election.:
”Iraq has now become what everyone thinks it was before, another battlefield in this war with Islamic terrorists, and we’ve got to end it with a victory,” Mr. Lieberman said during an interview with the nationally syndicated conservative radio talk show host Glenn Beck on Tuesday.
In the 15-minute interview, Mr. Lieberman warned against the United States becoming isolationist, and he seemed to agree with Mr. Beck’s repeated statements suggesting that the war against Islamic terrorists represented the brink of an international war. […]
At one point in the interview, Mr. Beck asked pointedly, ”Why is it there aren’t more politicians saying, ‘Guys, this is World War III. We are in deep trouble?’ ”
Mr. Lieberman responded by saying that he thought that both Republicans and Democrats treat ”politics as if it was a sport in which you are on one team,” and that ”the aim is for that team to win.”
”And when you do that, you forget that there are larger interests, which is the interests of the United States of America,” he said. ”The other thing going on here is that you know people don’t like to face the reality of danger, and maybe some politicians don’t like to be the ones to talk about it. But everything you’ve just said is right.”