Joe Lieberman: Choosing sides

What happened

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the former Democratic vice presidential candidate, said he is willing to give a keynote address for his friend John McCain at the Republican National Convention in September. Even if he is not asked to give a prime-time address, Lieberman will probably still address the GOP delegates, an aide says. (The Hill) In an interview Sunday, Lieberman said he’d “hesitate” to call Democratic presidential frontrunner Barack Obama a Marxist, as suggested by conservative columnist William Kristol in The New York Times, but that it is a “good question.” Obama has “some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America,” he added. (MSNBC)

What the commentators said

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"Ah, loyalty," said Christopher Orr in The New Republic’s The Plank blog. After Lieberman “pleaded for, and received,” Obama’s endorsement in his tight 2006 reelection race, he now repays him by “smearing” him and “angling” for a prominent slot at the convention to nominate Obama’s presumed rival? “I’m tempted to compare Lieberman to Zell Miller,” the Democrat who trashed John Kerry at the 2004 GOP convention, but “Zell was a bitter old crank” on his way to retirement. Lieberman, it appears, is “shamelessly auditioning for a post in a McCain administration.”

Well, Miller also “agreed more with Republicans then he did with his own party,” said A.J. Sparxx in the blog PoliPundit. Lieberman, on the other hand, only “shares one or two issues with Republicans.” McCain would be much better off getting a “top Conservative to speak, to show he still remembers the base.”

Democrats are also “stewing over the prospect” of Lieberman endorsing “a Republican on national television,” said John Fund in The Wall Street Journal, and “Connecticut Joe” should watch his back. Democrats gave Lieberman the chairmanship of a plum Senate committee in return for his crucial support, which gives them a 51-49 majority. But if they pick up some seats in November, some Democrats are surely “salivating” to punish Lieberman for his “apostasy” and “pro-Iraq War views.”

I don’t know why anybody is surprised by this, said Sara K. Smith in Wonkette. Lieberman and McCain “share a special bond: they are are the most despised members of their political parties.” It seems “only natural” that “Lieberman, a Democrat who acts like a Republican,” would stand up at the Republican convention to “support his good friend who acts like a Democrat.”