Informed Speculation

In a piece that is already driving the Nutroots® crazy, Robert Kagan identifies Lieberman’s fatal flaw: he wouldn’t pretend to believe something he didn’t for political gain:

What makes him now anathema to a Democratic Party and to liberal columnists who once supported both him and the war? Why is there now a chance he will lose the Democratic primary in Connecticut after so many years of faithfully serving that state and his own party?

It will not be because he is a bad Democrat. As others have pointed out, on the broadest range of social, economic and even foreign policy issues he has been a stalwart member of his party. Indeed, the questioning of his Democratic credentials is absurd given that he was, after all, the party’s candidate for vice president in 2000.

It will not be because he is a hawk. Lest anyone forget, Lieberman was put on the 2000 ticket partly because he was a foreign policy and defense hawk, and most emphatically on the question of Iraq. In the 1990s he was the leading sponsor of a Senate resolution, which eventually passed with 98 votes, to provide money to Iraqis for the express purpose of overthrowing Hussein. This was what made him attractive to Democrats in 2000. It made him a fitting companion to that other hawk on the ticket, Al Gore. For remember, Gore, too, had gained the nomination as a relative hard-liner on foreign policy, including policy on Iraq.

If Lieberman loses, it will not even be because he supported the war. Almost every leading Democratic politician and foreign policymaker, and many a liberal columnist, supported the war. Nor will he lose because he opposes withdrawing troops from Iraq this year. Most top Democratic policymakers agree that early withdrawal would be a mistake. Nor, finally, is it because he has been too chummy with President Bush. Lieberman has offered his share of criticism of the administration’s handling of the Iraq war and of many other administration policies.

No, Lieberman’s sin is of a different order. Lieberman stands condemned today because he didn’t recant. He didn’t say he was wrong. He didn’t turn on his former allies and condemn them. He didn’t claim to be the victim of a hoax. He didn’t try to pretend that he never supported the war in the first place. He didn’t claim to be led into support for the war by a group of writers and intellectuals whom he can now denounce. He didn’t go through a public show of agonizing and phony soul-baring and apologizing in the hopes of resuscitating his reputation, as have some noted “public intellectuals.”

…If Joe Lieberman loses, it will not be because he supported the war or even because he still supports it. It will be because he refused to choose one of the many dishonorable paths open to him to salvage his political career.

He is the last honest man, and he may pay the price for it. At least he will be able to sleep at night. And he can take some solace in knowing that history, at least an honest history, will be kinder to him than was his own party.

That’s a fine piece that pretty much nails my own sentiments. Tuesday will be an ugly day for supporters of politicans who lead rather than follow, and the Lamont victory dances from the Nutroots® will be terrible to behold. A fine Senator is about to be lose his party’s primary to a rich neophyte with no scruples, no record, and no grasp of policy. But this too shall pass…maybe in November, those of us who admire men of principle will yet have the last laugh. If we don’t, life goes on still…