It sounds like Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman has his finger up to the political wind and sees which way it is blowing:
Sen. Joe Lieberman on Sunday called on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign and backed an international conference to find a way out of the crisis in Iraq.
Lieberman, who is seeking a fourth term as an independent candidate after losing the Democratic nomination to newcomer Ned Lamont on Aug. 8, also criticized some fellow Democrats. He said several Democrats are trying to impose a “litmus test” on the party.
“I think it’s still time for new leadership at the Pentagon,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Lieberman, an early supporter of the Iraq war, said he called for Rumsfeld to step down in 2003.
“With all respect to Don Rumsfeld, who has done a grueling job for six years, we would benefit from new leadership to work with our military in Iraq,” he said Sunday.
You can take this several ways: (1)Lieberman is restating what he has said all along that Rumsfeld isn’t the best person for the job. (2)Lieberman is NOT saying what he said before because before he’d couple that by stressing that it was George Bush’s call on whether to replace Rumsfeld. (3)Rumsfeld is on borrowed time and will be out within a month and Lieberman knows something and is being more emphatic now so he can benefit politically from Rumsfeld’s exit. (4)Lieberman’s internal polling shows that he needs to be a bit more critical of the war in order to siphon away some Connecticut Democrats who might not like the official Democratic candidate for Senate Ned Lamont, who defeated Lieberman in the primary largely because of his anti-war stance.
Anyway you cut it, it is NOT good news for Donald Rumsfeld. MORE:
Lieberman said the Bush administration should have sent more troops into Iraq “to secure the country.”
“We had a naive vision that the Iraqis were going to embrace us and then go on and live happily ever after,” he said.
The Lamont campaign issued a statement Sunday criticizing Lieberman for trying to “paint himself as courageous for clinging to the failed ‘stay the course’ policy in Iraq and not listening to the voters of Connecticut on the need to change course.”
“His new found ‘criticism’ of the war won’t convince Connecticut voters after so many years of stubbornly rubber-stamping Bush’s failed policies,” the statement said.
So the Lamont camp seems concerned that Lieberman is politically nimble enough to soften his support for the Bush administration and put together a winning coalition (independents, Republicans and Democrats uneasy about Lamont but unhappy about the progress of the war).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.