Please sign the petition at Joe Lieberman Must GO.
Richly deserved.
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by Michael Froomkin
Laurie Silvers & Mitchell Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Miami School of Law
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Carly,
Sickening example of partisanship. Democrat uber alles! Sickening. While I support Obama, I do not support the rabid partisanship and cult of personality that has sprung up around him.
Your thinking: “Lieberman didn’t ask how high when Dems said jump so off with his head. Who cares what the guy thinks. Who cares that he crosses party lines. Who cares that he was the VP candidate for Gore. He’s a rat!”
Is that what you want? Send him off to the gulag for re-education?
Randon, I really don’t want to see the Democrats follow the Republicans down the {R,D}INO road, either, but I think Lieberman just went too far when he went out on the road with McCain. At that point it became not about ideological differences but about actively working to undermine his own party.
Melinda, you are making a distinction without a difference. Simply because someone voices disagreement does not equate to “active undermining.” That kind of thinking is exactly what will sink Obama if both sides don’t start to redefine the dialogue.
Consider: Did Lieberman spread rumors that Obama is a Muslim? Marxist? Puppy-killer? No, all he did was say in light of all the evidence, he preferred McCain. I think in particular he did not agree with Obama’s stated policy with regards to dialogue with Iran. Can you point to anything he did or said that michael considers “evil”, i.e. a lie or anything “mean”? Is disagreement evil in America?
Seems to me that Lieberman is being targeted for no other reason than petty revenge. Vendetta. It is rhetoric like this that convinces me of the difference between liberals and progressives. Progressives like michael and perhaps you seem to have that same authoritarian gene you accuse the republicans of having had.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?
Lieberman didn’t just say he preferred McCain (although IMHO that would be enough to justify drumming him out of the caucus — he’s not, you will recall, a party member as he lost the Democratic nomination fight in Connecticut — he’s a member of the Connecticut for Lieberman party). Lieberman didn’t just go back on his 2004 general election campaign promise to support the Democratic nominee. He said stuff like this, describing the choice as:
In other words, Lieberman suggested Obama was unpatriotic — feeding in, intentionally, to the GOP smear campaign. (I’d have written “legitimating” except that Lieberman no longer has that power.)
The Democratic caucus doesn’t need to give a valuable chairmanship to the standard-bearer of the “Connecticut for Lieberman” Party. (Note also he’s been a miserable chair – hasn’t done a single lick of oversight work in two years.) Let him go to his natural home: the wilderness.
michael-
Only the last paragraph above is a legitimate argument. There are legitimate reasons to remove him. Revenge and vendetta are not among those. However, it does seem to me the Clintons drew first blood by abandoning him in the first place when he tried to run as a dem originally. And in any case, he was within his rights to run independently. Political parties are parties, not tribes. And your tribalism disturbs me.
Your warped reading of the “stuff” Lieberman said is further proof you are suffering from PTSD. I support Obama and still recognize that nothing in the quote is untrue. There were no “unpatriotic” implications by the quote.
You really need to get a way this weekend and relax.
Or, as I am beginning to suspect, progressives are closet totalitarians and snorkeling in the keys may not wind you down.
NOBODY SIGN THAT NONSENSE PETITION!
Froomkin I am totally ashamed of you. Especially since you hold yourself out to be an intelligent and respectable person in society, for you to spread such distorted nonsense is beyond fathom.
Although I do not support what Lieberman did during the campaign, that is not grounds to boot him from the Democratic Caucus…. For starters, we are lucky that he caucused with us when our own party (Nelson) booted him from the Democratic primaries 2 years ago.
Lieberman did what he felt was right for the country, not for the party. He went against the Democratic party on all votes regarding the Iraq War, because Lieberman is not a puppet for the Democratic agenda, rather he is an individualist who votes for what he believes in…. which is what all politicians should be, and seldom are. Lieberman is a respected Democrat and his support for McCain was always respectful, and never degrading as much of McCain’s campaign turned out to be.
Furthermore there were plenty of Republicans that supported Obama, and that is not grounds to boot them out of the Republican party…
Only you would say something so incredibly ignorant… supporting the removal of Lieberman from the Democratic Caucus is comparable to the behavior from Communist countries, not a democratic one such as ours.
Shame Shame Shame on you Froomkin. You have disgraced the University of Miami.
Go Democrats-
I wouldn’t put it that way, but its nice to know I’m not the only one who perceives this. Obama has picked “Rhambo” Rahm Emanuel to intimidate and retaliate against anybody who doesn’t tow the party line. This is shaping up to be worse for democracy than the republicans.
I thought michael knew better, I thought he stood for “discourse”. But in the past week he called a flier written in “the Onion-esque” style “evil”, and wan’t Lieberman’s head on a platter because he formed an independent opinion.
Is this what progressives are all about? Who gives a crap about Lieberman when you think of the harm Emanuel can do.
Random correct me if I am wrong but I believe that Rhambo is Jewish. He chose Rhambo because Obama has skeptical (at best) support from the Jewish community. He is reaching out to the Jewish community for support when it comes time to be reelected, and also to prove to the world that he supports the State of Israel and their right to defend themselves.
That’s just my own personal opinion…. I am falling out of my chair to see what nonsensical beliefs Froomkin can come up with…
I am still waiting for Froomkin to respond to my prior posting… or maybe the cat got his tongue.
The entire world, especially the University of Miami, is owed an apology for his ridiculous behavior. Shame Shame Shame on you Froomkin.
Go Democrats-
The Israel connection is secondary, but was probably a factor. Emmanuel is known as a pit bull that attacks anybody who questions the party….that’s why the Clintons loved him. The MSM has finally caught up and you can see summaries of his career online now.
At the same time, Emmanuel is considered instrumental in the famous handshake between terrorist PLO leader Arafat and Israel’s PM Rabin. What happened? The world gave a Novel Peace Prize to a mass murdering war criminal, and Rabin was assassinated. Also, Clinton/Emmanuel paved the way for “political” winds of terror groups, basically the reason why today terrorists like Ahmedinijad can appear on Larry King. So I am not sure how highly the Jewish community will think of a repeat approach to the region, which is basically what Obama is proposing.
If you don’t think the remark that John McCain has always put his country first while Barack Obama has not isn’t a direct slur against Obama’s patriotism, then there’s no convincing you no matter what. But in the spirit of trying, Joe also went on record in a tv interview as saying that he believed Obama was a socialist. These two silly attacks constituted the. greater part of the McCain smear campaign and Joe explicitly endorsed both lines. Joe could have supported McCain without going down the roads of political smear attacks, but he chose not to. There should be consequences for his choice of tactical support.
All this being said, I say keep your enemies close. I would keep him to the extent that it’s possible to do so after meteing out some sort of punishment that is visible to the public. Take him off of as many committees as possible. If he won’t take some medicine though, he will have proven himself totally insubordinate and should be expelled.
There’s two basic types of liberals, those who see no malice in being called liberal and believe what they believe because they HONESTLY believe it’s the right thing (most are this type).
Then there’s the intellectuals. If you call THEM a liberal, they think it’s a personal attack and that someone, like the Government, should STOP you from saying it for the good of all. No matter what you say or think, it’s somehow twisted into a personal attack on all that’s right in the world (which is THEIR way of thinking, by deffinition) and you need to be removed from their sight. NOT because they disagree with what you say, but because you actually have the racist, homophobic, Bush-loving, war-mongering, classist, sexist, baby-seal-clubbing, NERVE to say such a thing, making you unworthy of First Amendment, or any other, protections!!!
Intellectuals, ironically, are never actually content with disagreeing, or agreeing to disagree, because they place THEIR motives on those who disagree with them. Since they are full of hate and rage that someone would have the tumerity to think less intellectually than them, they attribute such thinking TO hate and rage – thereby justifying all-out measures to shut that person down.
So Michael will no more be content with disagreeing with someone generally reasonable like Lieberman, than he would be content with agreeing to disagree with a guy burning a cross on his lawn. By deffinition, disagreeing with an intellectual, is hateful and stupid. And hateful stupidity must be stopped just like the Klan, or Hitler, or…
He is to be pitied for the choiceless intellectual morass he lives in, not attacked. Let him sign his petition if it makes him feel better. None of it matters anyway since intellectuals like him, surrounding Obama in tighter circles as we speak, will do far more damage given their druthers, than simply booting someone they disgree with off some stupid committee.
We had our chance for a better nominee, but we blew it, and the guy we got stuck with has now been elected. May God have mercy on us, because the intellectuals won’t.
Joe Leiberman is a man without a country, and i intend to treat him as such. If I ever see him on the street (I live in DC), I intend to tell him to his face that he is worthless.
Susan, that’s quite a treatise on the obvious that you just wrote, except that you were too narrow. There are always people who will refuse to give ground to the other side of an argument on any issue. Sometimes the issues are political. Sometimes the aforementioned people will be liberal and sometimes they will be conservative. Many people will support such ideological intransigence and then on the other side will be those who won’t, who will complain that the other side is closed-minded for not accepting their view. That’s argument for you; there isn’t always going to be compromise–and why should there be? Applying different norms in an argument inevitably leads to dispute. Your response to “that’s racist!” appears to be “that’s a typical liberal intellectual–pulling out the race card.” But let’s just agree to disagree, since this just happens to be an argument that just isn’t that interesting.