Good riddance.

Look, Lieberman is a likeable guy (in the same way, as the lefty bloggers have noted, that Willie Tanner was). But he embodies so much of what’s wrong with Washington. He’s the prototypical David Broder candidate, a big government liberal who’s willing to engage in magnanimous gestures of bipartisanship . . . on issues where Republicans also support big government. So he’s cool with bombing and nation building, and state-sponsored health care. He’s okay with government censorship of video games and cable TV, and heavy-handed regulation of business.

Golly. What a moderate!

In other words, he’s wrong on every issue. He’s a culture warrior, a values cop, a Nanny Statist, and a big government foreign policy hawk. He favors high taxes, and a massive welfare state. He’s pro-pork, pro-status quo, and pro-business as usual.

So the choice for Connecticut was between a culture warrior, foreign policy imperialist, and welfare statist; and a socially liberal, dovish, welfare statist. I know who I’d have voted for.

Let’s also cut this crap about Ned Lamont’s position on the war being “fringe” or “extremist.” More than 60 percent of Americans now think the Iraq war was a mistake. Fifty-six percent think we should set a timetable for withdrawal. That’s the American public at large. I’d imagine the bulk of Democrats in Connecticut skew much more dovish. It’s the hawks’ increasingly untenable position of support for a trillion dollar war that’s now claiming 100 Iraqi civilians per day that’s now at the margins, not Ned Lamont’s.

Democrats in Connecticut selected a candidate who better represents their views than the one they have now. They didn’t “cannibalize” anyone. They didn’t “commit themselves to a dung heap,” as the insufferable Tammy Bruce asserted on her radio show this morning. They threw out a guy whose voice in Congress no longer coincided with their own, instead of voting for Lieberman simply because “that’s the guy we always vote for.” Good for them.

This the way our republic is supposed to work. Of course, thanks to laws members of Congress have passed to ensure their own job security, it too rarely does, actually, work that way. That Lieberman is now planning to run as an independent, and that the Washington establishment is cheering him on, only proves how many in this town of come to view their too powerful, taxpayer-funded positions as birthright.

I have no doubt that Lamont will eventually disappoint, just as I have no doubt that if the Democrats take either house of Congress, they’ll disappoint, too. For all the talk about “ideaological cleansing,” or that Lieberman was “ejected” from his party, the truth is, for all practical purposes, there’s little difference between Lieberman and the Democratic leadership. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid may talk in tough opposition to President Bush on the Sunday talk shows, but when it comes to truly holding this administration accountable for its mistakes, overreach, and out-and-out corruption, they’ve been cowards. Which frankly makes them no better than Lieberman. That Lamont’s comparatively minor divergence from Lieberman on a couple of issues somehow makes him a “radical” shows just how entrenched, incestuous, and status-quo Washington really is.

More incumbents need to lose more often. From both parties. The position of federal politician should be a short-term privilege, not a career.

Here’s hoping that Lieberman is only the first of many incumbents to lose this year.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 9th, 2006 at 9:37 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.