Joe Lieberman: Remember The Love

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Jay Newton-Small brings word of the wrist slap that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is expected to suffer for spending the last year calling Democrats a threat to national security. (He will keep his principal committee chairmanship and still caucus with the Democrats.) [UPDATE: Even Howard Dean likes the idea.] So what better time to remember all the love Lieberman has showered on Democrats in recent months? Here are some of my favorites:

In the Wall Street Journal, May 2008

By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy – not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush – activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years. Far too many Democratic leaders have kowtowed to these opinions rather than challenging them. That unfortunately includes Barack Obama, who, contrary to his rhetorical invocations of bipartisan change, has not been willing to stand up to his party’s left wing on a single significant national security or international economic issue in this campaign.

On CNN’s Late Edition, May 2008

The fact that the spokesperson for Hamas would say they would welcome the election of Senator Obama really does raise the question, “Why?”

On ABC’s This Week, March 2008

Well, I say that the Democratic Party changed. The Democratic Party today was not the party it was in 2000. It’s not the Bill Clinton-Al Gore party, which was strong internationalists, strong on defense, pro-trade, pro-reform in our domestic government. It’s been effectively taken over by a small group on the left of the party that is protectionist, isolationist and basically will –and very, very hyperpartisan. So it pains me. I’m a Democrat who came to the party in the era of President John F. Kennedy. It’s a strange turn of the road when I find among the candidates running this year that the one, in my opinion, closest to the Kennedy legacy, the John F. Kennedy legacy, is John S. McCain.

During his speech at the Republican National Convention, September 2008

Sen. Obama is a gifted and eloquent young man who can do great things for our country in the years ahead. But eloquence is no substitute for a record — not in these tough times.

During a McCain campaign conference call, June 2008

I was troubled earlier in the year during the campaign season when Senator Obama referred to, I guess compared Iran and other rogue and terrorists states to the Soviet Union and minimized the threat represented by Iran. I think that is wrong.

In a speech before the Center for U.S. Global Entanglement, July 2008

[Obama] said he would be open to changing his plan for Iraq after going there and talking to General Petraeus — only to change that position a few hours later after being heatedly criticized by organizations like Moveon.org?

On Fox News, May 2008

John [McCain] is closer to Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy, and I would say, Bill Clinton in foreign and defense policy than Sen. Obama has been in this campaign.

At a McCain campaign rally in Pennsylvania, August 2008

In my opinion, the choice could not be more clear: between one candidate, John McCain, who’s had experience, been tested in war and tried in peace, another candidate who has not. Between one candidate, John McCain, who has always put the country first, worked across party lines to get things done, and one candidate who has not. Between one candidate who’s a talker, and the other candidate who’s the leader America needs as our next president.