POLITICS-US:
Neo-Conservatives' "Favourite Democrat" Falls
Jim Lobe
Most analysts attributed Lamont's remarkable victory -- it marked only the third time in 25 years that an incumbent senator was defeated in a primary election -- to a combination of grassroots Democrats' revulsion toward Bush and the Iraq war, in particular, and Lieberman's failure to pay attention to the concerns of his constituents back home.
"His victory represents a growing voter revolt against the failed policies and politics of the Bush administration and its congressional enablers, particularly the debacle in Iraq," according to Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, which represents more left-wing Democrats.
That is precisely the concern of neo-conservatives like Kristol and other backers of the Iraq war who see in Lieberman's defeat not only the possible collapse of dwindling public support for the war, but also the loss of the leading champion for their foreign policy ideas in the Democratic Party, which have been channeled mainly through the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) of which Lieberman is a long-time member and former chairman.
Lieberman's association with FDD was typical of a number of "bipartisan" organisations he helped create or sponsor that have been dominated by neo-conservatives.
In 2002, for example, he became honorary co-chair of the Committee to Liberate Iraq (CLI), an advocacy group created just a few months before the U.S. invasion by Kristol, Perle, former CIA director James Woolsey, and Eliot Cohen, among other prominent neo-conservatives. In 1998, he co-sponsored with Republican Sen. John McCain the Iraq Liberation Act, which made the ouster of Saddam Hussein official U.S. policy.
Since 2004, he has served as co-chair of the Committee on the Present Danger, another influential, mainly neo-conservative group created, in Lieberman's words, to "form a bipartisan citizens' army, which is ready to fight a war of ideas against our Islamist terrorist enemies, and to send a clear signal that their strategy to deceive, demoralise, and divide America will not succeed." Other board members include Woolsey, Perle, Cohen, and Gaffney.
As the Iraq war became increasingly unpopular over the past year, Lieberman, to the frustration and fury of many of his party colleagues, served as the administration's chief Democratic defender.
In a column he published in the Wall Street Journal last fall -- and that was subsequently cited repeatedly by top administration officials, including Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney -- he criticised fellow Democrats who favoured withdrawal, arguing that "we undermine the president's credibility at our nation's peril."
Indeed, so favourably was Lieberman regarded in the White House that, as he was leaving the well of the House of Representatives after his 2005 State of the Union Address, Bush embraced Lieberman and planted a kiss on his cheek.
For most Connecticut Democrats, it turned out to be the kiss of death. (END/2006)
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