LieberHistory

I’m proud that I never once voted for Joe Lieberman.  I recall his first campaign for Senate.  I’d taken my kids to see Dukakis speak in Bridgeport, and picked up a LWV handout that spelled out each candidate’s position on major issues.  I was puzzled as I read it; the Republican supported traditionally Democratic positions, while the Democratic candidate — Lieberman — was clearly a Republican in his positions.  Our Senator at the time was Lowell P. Weicker, a liberal Republican.  Conservative Republicans hated him, and they supported Joe’s campaign against Weicker.  

Lieberman’s “liberal Democrat” rep is a carefully crafted lie.  It was back then, too.  Listen to William F. Buckley in the National Review, Oct. 14, 1988:

I went down to a Rotary Club meeting in Stamford to hear Lowell Weicker’s Democratic opponent, Joseph Lieberman, hold forth. Lieberman is the attorney general of the state of Connecticut and he has a reputation for being an eat-’em-alive liberal. He certainly didn’t act that way in speaking to the Rotarians, and though it is natural to change emphases just a little depending on what group you are speaking to, one walked away from the Sheraton Hotel doubting that Joe Lieberman deals in forked tongues.

On abortion (Lowell Weicker will be satisfied only when the Federal Government provides a bonus to any woman who aborts her child), Lieberman looks and sounds genuinely distressed by the subject. It is, he says, a profound moral question. He opposes abortion. But he would not outlaw it. And then he points out that Roe v. Wade, which turned the country’s laws around on the subject of abortion, recognized the right of the state at some point during pregnancy to extend protection to human life. He was saying, in effect, that although it developed under Roe v. Wade that anyone can get an abortion at any time, in fact, the Supreme Court only meant to license it for early in the pregnancy.

When William F. Buckley loves ya, I don’t think you can call yourself a liberal Democrat.  You betcha.

I voted for Weicker, recalling the evolution of his position on the Vietnam conflict, among other things.  And over the years, Lowell Weicker has proven to be a man who stands for what’s right.

Lowell Weicker & Ned Lamont

So thanks to Harry Reid and the rest of the DINO old boys’ club in the Senate, I think the Change ship has sailed — and we ain’t on it.