At What Price Purity?

Isn't it fascinating in a time in which everybody and their brother thought that we would be witnessing the disintegration of the Republican governing coalition that, instead, we are watching the Democrats fragment over what to do about poor ol' Joe Lieberman? Who'd have ever thought that the same man who came within one more activist Supreme Court Justice of becoming Al Gore's vice president would, just six years later, become the lightning rod for the rampaging dementia of a one-time great and seemingly permanent majority party?

It's not as though the three-term senator from Connecticut has become a DINO, after all. There really isn't any such thing anymore, anyway, but even if there was, a big, fat 17 ACU rating wouldn't seem to qualify for that label. Nor would joining John McCain's "gang of fourteen" which left the Democrats' unconstitutional confirmation filibuster weapon in place, or his attempts to deflect Bill Clinton's impeachment (and ultimate vote for acquital). Or, for that matter, his decision to ride shotgun on then-Prince Albert's bloodless coup attempt. Joe Lieberman is as rock-solid a member of the opposition as any Donk could find or ever want.

The difference between him and his erstwhile comrades, of course, is that his opposition is loyal rather than disloyal. And for that his party's base has condemned him to political death.

That's where Lieberman's wacko primary challenger, Ned Lamont, came from. Fueled by a ton of self-financing, the rich Kos-hack from Greenwich is giving the incumbent a serious run for his money. Though Lieberman at last check was still fifteen points ahead, he has taken the extraordinary precaution of starting the gathering of signatures to get on the November ballot as an independent.

Why would the far Left want to monkey around with what should be a lock "blue" senate seat? Is tolerating even one patriotic voice in their midst really that unbearable? David Frum asked that same question:

The poisonous hatred directed at Lieberman has passed beyond the point of the political into the realm of the psychological. They hate him for keeping his Senate seat in 2000 rather than going down with the ship. They hate him for his modulated voice. They hate him for his attention to ethical issues. They hate him for what they themselves at any other time would have regarded as his virtues as for his political unorthodoxies.

It's a hatred reinforced by repetition and intensified by echo-chamber unanimity. It's a hatred ungrounded upon any clear foundation of reason, undirected to any political purpose. I can't remember ever seeing anything like such an angry excommunication of one Republican by others in my political lifetime - although perhaps the hatred felt by the Goldwaterites for Nelson Rockefeller comes close. But there at least the two factions were separated by real ideological disagreements. Not so in Lieberman's case. He remains one of the most liberal members of the Senate: The American Conservative Union rates him as more liberal than Debbie Stabenow, more liberal than Barbara Boxer, more liberal than Hillary Clinton, more liberal than Russell Feingold - and equally liberal as John Kerry and Barack Obama. Rating is not an exact science of course, but you get the idea.

Speaking of Lieberman's senate colleagues, they don't seem to be of one mind on how to approach this quasi-sectarian rivening either. While John Kerry and Hillary Clinton chickened out on endorsing him in the primary, Joe Biden, Ken Salazar, and none other than Babs Boxer, the biggest nutter in the Senate Democrat caucus, will be campaigning for him over the next month.

This reflects the perpetual pickle in which elected Dems remain ensnared. If they piss off their crazoid nutroots, they run the risk of their financing and GOTV efforts withering up when they need them the most. But if they get too closely identified with them, they can kiss goodbye (again) any chance of regaining their power.

That's why Joe Lieberman is also a barometer of these fratricidal tendencies. The worst possible outcome for Dem poobahs (short of the GOP picking up this seat, which would be a miracle of water-into-wine proportions) would be Ned Lamont winning the Dem primary and then an independent Lieberman triumphing in November. It'd be the worst of all worlds - further discreditation nationally, the needless loss of a senate seat "officially," and perhaps formally if poor ol' Joe opted (understandably) not to caucus with the Dems.

That outcome is probably not in the cards, given the degree to which Lieberman wiped up the floor with Lamont in their first debate:

He coolly took Lamont apart, limb by limb, revealing the netroots favorite's candidacy as what it is: a childish lashing out by the Democrats' anti-war base at an extraordinarily ill-chosen target.

Lamont has one issue and one issue only: the Iraq war. And it's an issue about which, should he be elected, he would be able to do absolutely nothing. How does he differ substantively from Lieberman on health care, education, dealing with North Korea, Social Security? Hardly at all, despite a lot of blustering during the debate.

In fact, it hardly seems as if Lamont knows anything about national policy, save what his staff has briefed him on. All he has to say is that Lieberman is too close to George W. Bush.

I guess this primary election will also be a barometer of far-Left influence as well. But even if the Kos kids do manage to erase the "D" after Joe Lieberman's name, 'tis doubtful they'll remove his name from the Senate roster. If that makes them feel like they've accomplished something, al Donka is in even bigger trouble than any of us have heretofore imagined.

UPDATE: Great minds think alike; pity they can't both draw the same level of traffic, too.