Dealing With Conscience-Driven Joe

The Democrats would seem to have two problems with Senator Joe Lieberman. The immediate one is his threat to put the kibosh on the party’s signature issue, health care, as a matter of conscience. The longer term threat is that Joe will bolt the party and the Dems will lose their 60 vote, veto-proof majority in the Senate.

The fact is, however, that the first problem is actually the solution to the second problem.

Joe is no longer a Democrat. He lost the party’s primary in Connecticut and then ran as an Independent. He then went on the support John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. The Dems now allow him to caucus with them anyway, to keep his prestigious post as head of Homeland Security committee and enjoy other party-in-power perks, because they expected him to go along on very important legislation. Like the health care bill.

But Joe can’t do it. He’s a man of conscience, he claims, and his conscience tells him it would be wrong to back the Dems on health care — the party that took him back when he begged to be taken back to enjoy all those governing party goodies.

Which brings us to the question of what happens after the health care issue is played out in the Senate. Would that 60 vote, veto-proof majority vanish for other important issues if the Dems throw Joe out of their caucus and deprive him of its associated perks? Might he become a Republican?

Not to worry. The Republicans might not have him because Joe’s long standing, conscience-based positions on issues such as climate change and abortion (all decisions are conscience-based for a man of conscience like Joe) go against that monolithic party’s credo. Even if Joe is accepted in the Republican fold, however, it won’t change his Democratic leanings on these other key issues. That’s because Joe as a man of conscience would never go along with Republicans just to be a good party man, any more than he’s doing now with the Dems and health care.

This man of conscience would thus continue to vote for Democratic Party issues even without being part of the party and receiving its benefits. Otherwise Joe’s present stance vis-a-vis health care would clearly, obviously, and undeniably be nothing but self-serving, attention grabbing hypocrisy.

And that couldn’t be the case. Could it?

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