Cliff's Corner

The Week That Was 5/26/06

Another week. More preposterousness to report.

Sometimes the beltway cognoscenti have their heads buried so far up their asses I’m not sure how they don’t wet their faces sipping their chardonnay. Much has been written about Chris “George W. Lincoln” Matthews or Even Bigger Russ and their faux-macho-lunch-pale love for the chest pounding of a president who’s now ready to admit that, well, smoking cigarettes next to penis piles at Abu Ghraib probably wasn’t such a good idea.

But were they the only myopic magistrates of political conventional wisdom in a town where incorrect narratives are more frozen in place than Elizabeth Dole’s face or wads of hundreds in a congressman's freezer.

This week we discuss Stuart Rothenberg, he of his self-named report, which predicts who will end up winning congressional races every two years. If he would just stick to being wrong about that, then I would have no beef with him. But Mr. Rothenberg decided to wade into the deep end of the pundit pool this past week, telling all of us “angry Democrats” why we are wrong for participating in the “unseemly” behavior of practicing democracy by supporting a primary challenger to Joe Lieberman. Rothenberg seems despondent that such treachery could indeed occur, as “His defeat, unlikely as it may be, would be a sad, sad chapter in American politics.”

First of all, get a room. Second of all, let’s help you with your analysis Stu, because shockingly you echo the talking points of the majority of the dimwit pundit parade who all breathlessly claim that the opposition to Joe Lieberman is all about his support for the War in Iraq.

Yes, that is certainly a large part of the story, and I know you can’t understand why people might question the judgment of someone who not only voted to support this travesty, but is delusional enough to still agree with the Bush Administration’s assessment that downtown Baghdad is beginning to look a bit like Greenwich Village. But you see Stu, if you think this is all about Iraq, well, you then you understand the situation much like George Bush understands fractions.

The fact of the matter is, that Joe Lieberman, a senator from one of the bluest states in the nation, spends most of his time playing hide the salami with Hannity, writing op-eds to the right-wing Wall Street Journal criticizing his own party and basically reinforcing whichever false stereotype of Democrats he can fit into a fifteen minute television appearance before the rouge starts to fade (the weak on security and values comments are always especially helpful).

Lieberman was the first Democrat, and one of the few, to engage in the histrionics about President Clinton’s downright awful behavior with that intern. President Bush’s trashing the constitution, however, well we best not question a president during wartime according to Joemania (I guess Al Qaeda’s bombing our embassies in Africa and our having troops in the former Yugoslavia doesn’t register on Joe’s “criticize” the president scale).

So he fucked Clinton and then kissed Bush.

You need more examples Stu? Samuel Alito, that crappy energy bill, the word Joementum, school vouchers, in the pocket of the pharmaceuticals, that ridiculous bankruptcy bill and his willingness to sit close enough to Bill Bennett to cause acute renal failure in any normal mammal.
Oh yeah, and his great position on abortion which you refer to—you might want talk to the women in Connecticut who he thinks should be carted off to remote hospitals post-rape, if the one they happen to be closest to doesn’t feel “comfortable” offering emergency contraceptives.

In short, Lieberman is the reason people like you go on CNN and say the Democrats don’t stand for anything. So go back to your day job treating elections with consequences as if they’re the next installment of American Idol.