The polls show Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman is falling far behind anti-war challenger Ned Lamont as the state’s August 8 Democratic primary approaches.
But it’s not all bad news for the embattled senator. At least Tom DeLay’s rooting for him.
The former House majority leader from Texas is a Republican who may not agree with the Bush White House’s favorite Democrat on every issue but who thinks the Senator is right-on when it comes to foreign policy.
“[Lieberman’s] very good on the war,” DeLay said during an interview this week on the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes” program.
With the Connecticut primary, in which Iraq War-enthusiast Lieberman trails war-critic Lamont by 13 points in the latest poll, just days away, the incumbent’s neoconservative allies are rushing to his defense.
Lieberman’s latest campaign contribution list features a $500 donation from Bill Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard, a publication so Pravda-like in its cheerleading for the Iraq imbroglio – and for an attack on Iran — that Vice President Dick Cheney has stacks of each new edition delivered to the White House for distribution to the staff.
Conservative columnist Ann Coulter’s defending Lieberman, as well, going on at some length during an interview with Fox’s Neal Cavuto to explain how much she admires the senator and suggesting that, instead of fighting for the Democratic nomination in Connecticut, Lieberman ought to switch parties. “I think he should come all the way and become a Republican,” argues Coulter, who says of Lieberman and the GOP: “at least he’d fit in with the party.”
Even though it comes from Coulter, that’s not entirely crazy talk. In February of this year, Connecticut Republican Congressman Chris Shays told editors of the Stamford Advocate newspaper that he would be voting for Lieberman this year and urged other Republicans to do the same. The Hartford Courant reported on February 28 that “GOP officials have discussed cross-endorsing Democratic Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman this fall.”
The Courant story, which broke before a cross-endorsement deal could be brokered, squelched it for the time being. “One GOP operative who was aware of the discussions said premature public disclosure of the possible cross-endorsement probably would kill the idea. That seems to be case,” the paper observed last winter.
But with Lamont pulling ahead in the polls, and with the Lieberman’s backers circulating petitions to run him as an independent if he loses the Democratic nod, some Connecticut Republicans have again been discussing the prospect that a defeated Lieberman might find a new political home on the GOP line. The campaign of the endorsed Republican candidate for the Connecticut Senate seat, former legislator Alan Schlesinger, has been rocked by charges that he may have a serious gambling problem. Connecticut’s Republican Governor Jodi Rell suggested in July that Schlesinger might want to consider quitting the race. Schlesinger stayed in for the time being. But all bets could be off if Lieberman – a Senate supporter the Bush White House does not want to lose — suddenly becomes available.
